


A Southwest Story

by MyOverwatchHasEnded (Regularity)



Series: Overwatch: Mei Missions [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-05-14 04:28:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19265893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Regularity/pseuds/MyOverwatchHasEnded
Summary: Mei-Ling Zhou is running her second mission, this time to the badlands of Texas to collect local climate data using machinery sourced from her previous mission to Ecopoint Acatama. She is worried about leading the team, specifically because she is commanding Fareeha "Pharah" Amari, who has become her best friend in the weeks since their last mission.Winston and Angela "Mercy" Ziegler round out the team, with tactical support from Brigitte Lindholm. They are going to meet an old contact of Winston's to navigate the badlands.





	1. I'm Going To Have To Science The Heck Out Of This

_ Entry 41 - January 28, 2076 _

_ Winston approved the new mission, and he is coming along for the ride! I had hoped he would take command, but he is refusing to let me back down when it is my mission. He is an aggravating leader. _

_ He also says we will be meeting an old contact, but wouldn’t say who. I have suspicions, but I’m afraid for it to be true.  _

_ Between Brigitte, Winston, and myself, we managed to scrape together enough useful salvage from Ecopoint: Atacama to create a new mobile sensor station. Snowball’s operating system controls it, and it will hopefully allow us to collect localized data in the region of Texas we are going. It is winter in Texas, but the temperature map still shows it is above freezing.  _

_ I’m worried about commanding Fareeha. Last mission we were acquaintances, but now… what if I make a bad call because I am afraid to put my friend in danger? What if I second guess myself and put her in more danger trying to prove I’m not biased? _

_ I don’t think leadership ever becomes easy, though perhaps it will be nice not to have Reinhardt ignoring orders because he got too excited about fighting. _

 

The team descends the ramp on the outskirts of Wheeler, Texas. Long since abandoned, there isn’t much to look at in this flyover region. Winston helps Mei unload the sensing equipment, which Mei thinks isn’t exactly mobile so much as movable. 

Dr. Ziegler and Fareeha have yet to don their armor. The weather is nice, a dry, crisp 5 degrees Celsius, with a good wind. Mei pulls her blue arctic parka’s hood up, wondering if she should invest in some actual armor at some point. This mission should be less combat-oriented than the last, though.

The last should have been no combat-oriented, she reminds herself.

“It must be nice having all that fur,” she says.

Winston grunts, setting down the mobile sensor. “It has its benefits, but only in winter. I would not have liked being in Atacama, for instance.”

Mei’s nose crinkles, thinking of the sweaty fur. “And I bet choosing Vancouver as the new HQ location had nothing to do with its cooler temperature year-round.”

Winston smiles. “Taking out all the political and tactical reasons why the west coast in Canada is a good choice, yes, the weather is nice up there.”

Fareeha throws an arm around Mei’s neck and whistles appreciatively. “This is a very nice machine, for a pile of exploded scrap.”

Mei extracts herself from Fareeha’s friendly gesture, and coughs politely. “Brigitte did most of the touching up. She is very upset she could not come and see it in action.”

“I painted the designs,” Winston says.

Fareeha runs a finger along the pictograms of rain, and clouds, and tornadoes. “They are quite good, for finger painting.”

“I used a brush, thank you very much.”

Brigitte’s voice comes in over the comms. “Team Rocket Pop, come in.”

Mei grunts again and Winston beams. That name…

“Mei reporting in,” she says. 

“Frostbite*,” Winston says. “Codenames over comms, remember.”

Mei glares. “Frostbite reporting in. We touched down and are unloading the climate gear now. Wheels up in ten to meet Win--” She hesitates. “Zinj’s* contact.”

Winston nods. She has no idea what Zinj refers to, but Fareeha laughed and clapped Winston on the back when he announced it. Maybe an old movie reference? Fareeha loves pre-millennial movies.

Mei asks, “HQ, any chatter or sign of trouble?”

Brigitte says, “None so far. Hey, what are you--”

“Team Rocket Pop,” Reinhardt says with his usual loud bravado. “Good luck on your weather watching today. I hope you kill many clouds, Snow Queen.”

“We’re not killing clouds,” Mei says, but there is a brief scuffle on the comms and Brigitte scolding Reinhardt.

“He is getting antsy,” Brigitte says. “If he’d just stop treating me like I’ll break if he leaves me alone for two seconds, maybe he would be out with you instead.”

“HQ, copy that,” Mei says, and sighs. “Team Rocket Pop, over and out.”

While Mei and Winston finish attaching the mobile cart to the rover, Angela and Fareeha go off to get into their armor. 

“Winston, can I ask a question?”

“Of course, Mei.”

“How am I supposed to deal with commanding friends in combat situations?”

“Ah.” Winston stands to his full height when on two legs, stretching and scratching his chest. “That is a difficult question, and the answer is probably not one you will like.”

Mei waits, configuring the mobile sensor. Snowball is in sleep mode right now, waiting for the machine to activate. It will use more power than normal, and they need Snowball for the entire duration, to control the data collection.

“Fareeha is a soldier, first and foremost,” Winston finally says. “She will do as she is directed, up and until it will endanger the lives of more than herself. It is difficult to know the bounds between favoritism and fear of harm. It is a struggle to be in a combat situation with a friend, where you are equals in all aspects of your relationship normally, and suddenly to be in a position of authority. It strains some relationships, like Jack Morrison and Gabriel Reyes. It strengthens others, like Brigitte and Reinhardt. At the end of the day, if you are going to be a leader, you will need to lead even if she disagrees, and deal with any fallout after.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that.” She hadn’t considered the strain from Fareeha’s side. “Well, what if I make a bad call and she gets hurt, or others get hurt because I was trying to protect her?”

Fareeha and Angela come back out of the dropship wearing their respective armors. Fareeha’s bronze armor blends in well with the surrounding beige and rust, while Angela’s Valkyrie armor, white with glowing wings, stands out like a sore thumb. They appear to be two sides of the same coin. One harms, the other heals. As Angela is not that much older than Fareeha, their recollections of the original Overwatch may overlap more than Fareeha and any other active member.

Winston says quietly, “If you’re thinking about it now, you’ll know better how to handle it when the time comes. For now, it might be a good idea to set expectations with her. Be the leader she expects and needs you to be.”

“Fareeha, a quick word?” Mei asks, as the pair approach the rover with the cart attached.

Fareeha nods and spares a stoic smile for Angela and Winston, and Mei leads her off towards the dropship, which is closing up in preparation of them being gone.

“Are we having a serious conversation?” Fareeha asks. 

“Maybe? I just wanted to talk to you as the leader of this mission, and not as Mei your friend.”

“Oh, if you’re worried it’ll get between us, you telling me what to do now that I’ve seen you sing at karaoke, you don’t have to worry about that.”

Mei’s face reddens and she says, “I’m not. I just wanted to say that I want it to work. We can be friends and still get along as commander and soldier.”

“You’re a commander, now?” Fareeha teases.

“You know what I mean.”

“I do. You’ve seen me on mission, Mei. No nonsense. I save that for the afterparty.”

“Good. Because I would hate to see our friendship suffer because one of us couldn’t handle the mission dynamic.”

“We got this, Mei-Mei. Once I put on the helmet, you’re just the boss and I’m just the eyes in the sky.”

If only it is that easy, Mei thinks. She is not used to her nickname yet, but she feels warmth blossom in her chest whenever Fareeha says it.

“We got this, Reeha,” she says.

Fareeha puts on her helmet, lowers the visor, and salutes. “Ready to fly, Frostbite.”

“Make a quick circuit to be safe, Pharah.”

Fareeha nods and rockets up into the clear blue sky. Mei grabs her sunglasses, the ones designed for arctic snowblindness, and watches Pharah flit around with her Airdancer mod.

Make good decisions, Mei-Ling Zhou. Keep everyone alive.

Angela waves Mei over to the rover, and says, “Winston tells me his contact is meeting us at the cafe, just down the street.”

Mei nods. The mission is really starting now. 

“Call signs only over comms and in the presence of non-Overwatch,” she says.

“Roger that, Frostbite. I will stay behind and watch over the rover.”

Mei glances at Winston for confirmation, and Winston just stone-faces her. All right, then. 

“Pharah can maintain the perimeter from above. I’d rather not split us up more than necessary until we know the layout of the mission.”

Angela nods. “Let us go meet this contact, then.”

Winston leads the way over to the cafe, his plates of armor shifting as he walks. There is no one around. No cars on the dusty street, no people under shaded porches. Nothing but a place that people used to be. Except for the lone hoverbike in front of the cafe, everything has an air of dusty disuse. Mei sneezes when some dirt whips up from the wind. The breeze creates a slight whistling, and this reminds Mei of the howling blizzards in Antarctica.

She says, “Pharah, report,” in the comms.

“Not even the buzzards want anything to do with this place,” Fareeha responds. “Only thing moving is the dirt.”

“Keep an eye on the dropship and rover. Zinj, anything on the scanners?”

WInston shakes his head. “One life sign in the cafe. Some smaller life forms creeping around, but nothing more dangerous than a scorpion.”

“I don’t like scorpions,” Angela says. “Any creature that can kill you with its tail is not to be trusted.”

Mei ignores that and inspects the hoverbike as they pass. It is dusty, but recently ridden, with dirt tracks where its rider walked inside the cafe. Tracks with a curious divot behind the boots.

“This says it is the Deadlock Gang,” Mei says, observing the paint job. “Are we meeting a criminal?”

“In the strictest sense of the word, yes,” Winston says. “But we can trust him. You’ll see.”

Mei isn’t so sure, and in the future she is not going to allow members of the team to hold back secrets for some sense of drama. Not even Winston.

“I’m going in,” Winston says, pulling his Tesla cannon loose and loping in on one big gorilla fist.

A bell rattles lifelessly as he opens the door inward, and waves Mei and Angela forward a few seconds later.

Mei steps in, removing her sunglasses as she walks into darkness, waiting for her eyes to adjust.

In the dim cafe, lit only by the dusty sunshafts raking in through broken blinds, sits a man with a cowboy hat tipped forward over his face. He appears to be snoring, and Mei does her level best to keep from squealing with delight as she recognizes him.

When Angela walks in and sees him, she gasps.

“Jesse McCree, as I live and breathe.”

He grins and tips his hat back. A ruse, then. Pretending to sleep. Mei can’t believe it’s him. 

He says, “That voice is familiar. Ain’t I killed for you, before?”

 

Notes:

* Frostbite was the name for Mei’s original character in the early design process for Overwatch.

* Zinj is a reference to the movie Congo, which Winston likes as a cheesy horror movie despite its problematic portrayal of gorillas.


	2. Playtime's Over

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mei and the rest of the team meet with Jesse McCree, who agrees to guide them through the badlands and navigate bandit gangs, but for a price.

“I see you’ve got some new blood,” McCree says, tipping his hat to Mei. Mei stammers and holds out her hand, and he gives it a good long shake.

“She’s old blood,” Winston says. “This is Mei-Ling Zhou, part of the Ecopoint projects back in the old days.”

“Jesse McCree, as our lovely Angela just pronounced,” he says, smiling. “Ecopoints, huh? So you’re starting small, Winston. That’s a good idea. Keep yourselves off the radar a while.”

His southern drawl, which is totally fake but buttery smooth, sends shivers down Mei’s spine. She never met him in the old days, but he was young, brash, and handsome in a way that Mei had no use for. Now he’s older than her by a few years, a little gray in his beard and a warm smile.

She hardly notices the mechanical arm under his poncho.

“It’s good to see you, Jesse,” Angela says, placing a hand on his shoulder and squeezing. “We’ve seen the news about your exploits.”

“Which one? The train heist, or the train derailment, or the train heist from the train derailment?”

Winston chuckles nervously. “I’m beginning to think you should stay away from trains.”

McCree shrugs. “Only way to get across these badlands without showing ID. I’m not exactly unwanted in these parts, you understand.”

He offers them all a seat at the booth, but between all their armor, gear, and Winston’s bulk, they none of them can easily sit. They pull up chairs and stools, and Mei makes a point to sit farthest from Jesse McCree.

Mei says into the comms, “Pharah, come in.”

“Pharah, reporting. All quiet in the sky, Frostbite.”

“Did you say Pharah? Little Fareeha’s here?” McCree says. “Last time I saw her was on the news, shutting down that illegal operation for Helix.”

She ignores him for a moment and says, “Jesse McCree is our contact. You should come down and say hello.”

Fareeha laughs in the comms. “Of course it’s him.”

Her jetpack thrusters fire outside and she comes in for a landing, removing her helmet in the process. There is a big smile on her face, and she slaps Jesse on the back once she gets inside.

Fareeha says, “I heard you stopped a train heist a couple weeks back.”

“Stopped the heist. They still stopped the train.” His grin fades. “I was sorry to hear about your mother. I never got a chance to say it, but she was the best at everything she did.”

Even faking her death, Mei thinks. Winston and Angela don’t know she’s alive, so Fareeha glances between them and McCree before saying, “She had mostly nice things to say about you, too. When she wasn’t grumbling about the cowboy refusing to wear armor.”

“Ain’t never seen a rustler in flak,” he says, grinning again.

Winston clears his throat and nudges Mei. 

Mei’s voice squeaks as she says, “This is all very nice, catching up, but Mr. McCree--”

“Just Jesse, if you please.”

“J-Jesse. We are here on a mission.”

“Right, right.” He sits forward now and glances at everyone before motioning to Winston. “Big fella here said you were trying to scan for temperature spikes?”

Mei’s mouth is suddenly dry and she licks her lips. “That’s right. We would like you to be our guide into the badlands. We have topographical data and maps, but you know the area and any local dangers.”

“I figured as much. I wouldn’t leave your dropship here, so you might as well fly it along.”

“So you’ll lead us?” Mei asks. Having him on the dropship will be nice. They can chat and maybe he will tell some stories.

“One condition. I need a favor in return, after this is done. A friend who might be in some trouble.”

Winston nods. “We can discuss the specifics after the mission, but I’m sure you wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important.”

“It really is good to see you all,” Jesse says. “No time like the present to catch up on the past.”

Mei laughs at his joke and then hides her red face. Fareeha smirks and Angela shares a glance with Winston. Mei’s face flushes even more.

“Okay,” she says, trying to recover. “We should get moving. I don’t know exactly how long these readings will take to capture, but the more daylight we have, the better.”

Jesse sits up and his spurs jingle against the wood baseboard. “Burning daylight sittin’ around. We need to make a stop ‘fore we go running into the desert, anyway. Local gangs have this whole region carved up, and if we don’t get permission, with a little persuasive coin in the mix, we’ll find our day trip more of a dead trip.”

Mei glares at Fareeha as she is making kissy-faces behind McCree’s back, but clears her throat as everyone is standing and gathering their things.

“We probably have room for your hoverbike on the dropship,” Mei says.

“If it’s all the same, I’ll drive.”

And Mei realizes the rover is already deployed, and it wouldn’t make sense to reload it and then unload it all over again.

“Zinj,” Mei says, as they step out of the diner and into the harsh light. Mei puts her sunglasses back on. “Mercy and I will follow Jesse in the rover. You and Pharah can follow in the dropship.”

“Wouldn’t it be better for me to scout?” Fareeha asks.

“The ship’s sensors can do that well enough while we’re traveling, and if anything goes wrong, you’ll be able to launch and already be in the sky.” Fareeha nods, and Mei wonders if she’s already making calls for her friend rather than her subordinate.

“Jesse,” Winston says, “here’s the frequency and the encryption for our comms. We use codenames only over comms.”

McCree learns their codenames and smiles. “So I suppose I get one, too, huh?”

“Better for everyone to be a little more anonymous,” Mei says.

“Who gets to choose?” he asks.

Winston smirks. “Normally I’d assign them, but as you aren’t part of Overwatch, officially, I guess I’ll leave it to our commanding officer today. Mei?”

Mei is only as embarrassed as she is angry at them all for noticing she is flustered around McCree.

They wait, and Mei hesitates. But if they can poke fun at her, she can poke fun at Jesse McCree.

“You can be Six-Gun*.”

He groans good-naturedly, and Mei delights at the small smile he gives her.

“Six-Gun it is,” he says, “I’ll ride over to the edge of town, back west. Meet there when you’re all set.”

Mei nods. “We will be there shortly.”

McCree hops on his hoverbike, tips his hat to her and the rest of the group, and speeds off in a whir of sound and wind. For a brief moment, Mei thinks she sees something familiar under the flap of one of the saddlebags when it kicks up from the wind of his departure.

“Interesting guy, isn’t he?” Fareeha asks, nudging Mei’s shoulder.

Mei shrugs, trying for nonchalance. “He is curious, to be sure. He seemed like such a boy playing at cowboys before I went into the ice, but now, he’s different.”

“Broody and detached, all the ladies love it,” Fareeha says, rocketing away before Mei can formulate a comeback.

Does she like broody and detached? Or does she just have a bit of a fangirl attachment?

She shakes herself out of the reverie and gets on the comms. “HQ, come in, Frostbite here.”

“HQ here!” Reinhardt’s voice comes through. “How did the meeting go with Win-Zinj’s contact?”

“Where’s Squire?” Mei asks. She doesn’t have the wherewithal to walk Reinhardt down memory lane right now.

“She had to attend to some feminine duties, which as I understand it, is difficult with only one good hand.”

“Okay…” Mei says, willing him to shut up, then feels bad about being annoyed with his youthful vigor and lack of tact. “The meeting went well. He’s leading us out to some local gang territory. It should be fine, since we’re asking permission to go, and aren’t here to cause any trouble.”

“They wouldn’t give you any trouble if you pounded their heads into the ground, either,” Reinhardt suggests.

“Noted. Rocket Pop out.”

“Godspeed, Snow Queen!”

“Frostbite,” she corrects him. She isn’t sure which nickname she likes less.

She hops into the driver’s seat of the rover, with Angela waiting in the passenger seat. It is primed and ready to drive, while Winston and Fareeha begin liftoff of the dropship.

“I hope the roads are okay, we didn’t exactly install shocks on the mobile sensor,” she says as she puts the rover into gear and presses the pedal. Not many people still drive older tech, but Mei is used to it from her time in Antarctica, where most of the vehicles were firmly on the ground with large rubber tires.

Angela says, “I am sure it will be okay. Jesse may not act it, but he has a good head on his shoulders. He’ll keep us out of danger, if he can.”

“I am personally hoping for a smooth ride, some friendly local gangs, and a quick extraction of temperature and climate data. After the last mission, not having to use my cryo-blaster as a weapon would be ideal.”

“Make no mistake, Mei,” Angela says as they pull up next to Jesse at the edge of town. “We are headed into danger. Better to be hope for not and prepare, than to simply hope.

With the engines of the dropship, the rover, and the hoverbike, Mei can hardly make out voices. She pings the comms.

“Six-Gun, can you hear me?”

After a moment’s hesitation where McCree fumbles with his earpiece, he says, “Loud and clear, Frostbite. It’ll take us half an hour to get to the waystation. Should be safe until we get there.”

“Anything we should be on the lookout for?” Winston asks.

“If someone shoots a rocket at you, dodge,” is all the answer he gets. Mei stifles a giggle.

Though if someone shoots a rocket at the rover, everything will be ruined. Not even counting whether they’d live through the explosion.

Jesse glances at the dropship hovering behind them, and then at Mei in the driver’s seat of the rover. He nods at her and they take off together.

He easily outpaces her and settles into a vanguard position, while Winston and Fareeha bring up the rear.

Dr. Ziegler asks, “How are you finding your second mission so far?” She has to almost yell it over the sounds of their convoy.

“I would be lying if I said it wasn’t strange to be commanding our commander.”

“He isn’t the Commander, you know. We don’t have a Strike Commander, yet. He’s just the operations guy. Eventually, he’ll be the face of the company.”

“It’s all unofficial, anyway,” Mei says. 

“Maybe. But we’re doing good work. You’re doing good work. If we can show the world that we are a new Overwatch, a different one, it will go a long way to gaining our legitimacy.”

Mei sighs. “It would be nice not to operate in secrecy.”

“It works against us, for sure,” Angela agrees. She stares ahead for a moment and smiles. “It really is good to see Jesse. He left Overwatch on bad terms, and some of us never got to properly say good-bye.”

There is a wistful expression on Angela’s face, and she covers it when she notices Mei’s glance.

“He was recruited out of one of these gangs, wasn’t he?” Mei doesn’t know the full story for Jesse McCree, since he was mostly part of Blackwatch and didn’t interact with the peaceful Science Division.

“The very gang whose hoverbike he is currently riding,” Angela says.

Mei wonders what that means, but she is interrupted in her thoughts by McCree veering hard left and yelling in the comms.

“Swing my way, road’s broken up ahead.”

Mei twists the rover, and it obeys sluggishly. She sees the space in the road up ahead where it appears a flash flood ripped away large chunks of the road, leaving pot holes big enough to fall into.

The mobile sensor attached to the rover sways dangerously as it corrects its course, then wobbles as its top-heavy weight pulls the tires off the ground before the scrub land just beside the road levels out enough, and the cart stops swaying. 

“A little more warning next time would not go amiss,” Mei says, annoyed and heart beating rapidly.

“Sorry about that,” McCree says in the comms. “Been riding hover long enough that I forgot other people ain’t so lucky.”

Fareeha says in the comms, “Status report.”

“Nothing a little twist and turn can’t fix,” McCree says. “Pharah, can you see if the road improves anywhere in the direction we’re going?”

“Scans indicate that most of the area beyond here is left in disrepair. M--Frostbite, things okay in the rover?”

Maybe it’s as hard on Fareeha as it is on Mei, trying to separate work from personal.

“We should find a place to stop and check the torsion on the tow cable,” Mei says. “That was a hard twist and I’d rather not break our delicate scrapheap.”

Angela snorts laughter, and McCree slows down at a relatively flat plain of dirt and scrub. They come to a halt while the dropship’s deployment door swings open, letting Fareeha out to scout around while they’re stopped.

Brigitte’s voice comes through the comms now. “Rocket Pop, come in. Crusader doesn’t know the meaning of the words ‘don’t touch the tech’. Are you stopped for distress?”

“We are probably fine, Squire,” Mei says. “Just checking the tow cable on the mobile sensor after a sharp turn. We will let you know when we are en route again.”

“Roger that, Frostbite. HQ out.”

It takes a few minutes of checking and testing, but eventually Mei is satisfied that there is no lasting damage to the cart or the equipment. She sighs and says over comms, “Wheels up. Pharah, anything to report?”

“We’re maybe five minutes out from something. Can’t really tell from here, but it looks like a hotel.”

“Is that where we’re heading, Jesse?” Mei asks directly to the man instead of over comms. He is standing nearby chatting with Angela, while they observe her yanking and pulling on the cart and the tow cable. 

“It is. Neutral gang ground. People go there to drink and make deals. No fighting. No shots fired. No arguments lest you be given the boot.”

“And if we don’t go in here,” Winston says over comms, “we’re likely to be shot down while out and about?”

McCree shrugs and says in the comms, “Nothing likely about. Damn certain, is what.”

“Very well. Are we ready to move out again?”

Mei says, “I think so.” She wipes some sweat from her brow and Jesse grins at her.

“What?”

“You’ve got a little grease on your forehead.”

She immediately swipes it away, only to make it worse when she realizes the grease from the tow cable is all over her hand still. She does her best to wipe it away with a cloth from the rover’s toolbox, but when she inspects herself in the rearview mirror, it looks like she’s been playing in the mud.

“You’re fine,” McCree says. “Proper woman have grit.”

He walks away without seeing her reaction, and she wants to throw a wrench at his head. 

Angela hops in the passenger seat again and offers a moist towelette from her supplies. She says, “It’s medicated, but at least it’ll help get some of that off.”

Mei takes it and nearly rips it open before hesitating. 

“No, we might need it for something more serious than makeup removal.”

“Very charitable, calling it makeup.”

“Ha ha,” Mei says, putting the rover back into gear, staring at her forehead in the rearview mirror and daring anyone to make fun of it.

They will, assuredly. The leader of the group looks like a greasejockey.

After Fareeha loads back into the dropship, they get underway, and it only takes a few minutes more of scrubland driving to see the building in the distance that Fareeha described as a hotel.

As they get closer, activity increases around them. Ramshackle huts and small groups of bikers and bandits watch as they pass. Some leer and catcall, some watch silently, calculating. All look ready to strip them of parts and clothing the moment someone says go.

The building is at the center of it all, and McCree leads them confidently through the gangs to pull up next to it. It looks a little worn down, with boards over some windows, and broken glass in others. Only one or two windows aren’t broken, and a giant blinking holo sign greets them.

Welcome to Hearts’ Wrest.

Mei’s gut twists with anxiety over being here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm making a small change to the way the missions will work going forward. Any combat that happens is going to be short and to the point, with a greater focus on the interpersonal interactions around and during the missions, rather than the nitty gritty shooty bangy parts. Missions are still going to form the basis of each arc, but they'll be reframed a bit. I hope that works okay for the readers!


	3. I'll Enjoy The Quiet While It Lasts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> McCree brings Mei and the team into the Hearts' Wrest, a neutral gang bar in the badlands of west Texas, to negotiate safe passage through the rest of the badlands. McCree meets a few old friends, and a couple of Talon operatives show up.

The Hearts’ Wrest waystation is something straight out of an old-time Western with warped and dusty glass windows and saloon-style doors on the outside, but with anachronistic modernizations like the holo-sign and the neon lights. Mei has seen its like in Six-Gun Killer. This was the life Jesse McCree had built for himself prior to Overwatch, and it is the life he seems to have gone back to.

The dropship lands, and Mei stops the rover next to Jesse’s hoverbike. She and Angela hop out and stand next to Jesse while Winston and Fareeha come ambling out of the dropship. It is quiet, and the dust blows freely here from the dropship’s thrusters. 

Mei asks, “Anything we should know inside, Jesse?” 

He tips his hat down and clips his revolver into its holster, secure. “Neutral territory. Gangs from all over the southwest rally here to make deals, drink in peace, see friends from rival gangs. Anyone disturbs the truce, they get disturbed.”

“Disturbed?” Angela asks. “As in dead?”

Jesse shrugs. “Maybe so. I ain’t never been around to watch it happen, but I also know a shallow grave when I see it.” He gestures to a flat expanse of dust with small hillocks butting up against a cliff of orangish-red rock.

“Don’t cause any problems,” Mei says, nodding. “Should be no trouble.”

“Don’t engage unless I say so,” Jesse finishes. “We should be in and out, ten minutes.”

Fareeha looks to Mei. “Where do you want me, boss?”

Mei looks around and sees there’s a lot of activity gathering nearby. These bandits probably aren’t used to seeing dropships, soldiers, and scientists.

“Monitor from the top of the dropship. If anything looks wrong, or if anything even looks like it might go wrong, send out a distress.”

“Eye on the fly,” Fareeha says, and her rocket booster takes her into the sky, to alight on the dropship, where she salutes and waves.

“Good luck, Pharah,” Mei says in the comms.

“You’re the ones going inside a den of thieves. May fortune smile upon you, Frostbite.”

Jesse McCree leads them into the Hearts’ Wrest, through swinging doors that creak and scream when he pushes them inwards. Into a small room with a more sophisticated security system. Scanners, an ID machine, racks for coats.

Jesse places his hand on the scanner. Despite his glove, a holo display immediately shows his face and a small dossier about him. Mei sees a higher than expected kill count before he pulls his hand away and the info vanishes.

“Some of you may not register with their system. It’s not exactly a public database.”

And he isn’t wrong, either. Winston and Mei show up as unknown, but Angela’s dossier appears immediately, an image of her in her field medic uniform from the early days. Marked Harmless. High priority on a battlefield. Kill count: not zero.

She doesn’t seem ashamed that her information is on display for everyone to see. She removes her hand politely and without haste. 

“Do we wait for someone to process us?” Mei asks. Winston stands outside as the small room is too tiny for a large gorilla.

The inner security door beeps and opens and a very tall, slim woman stands on the other side. She wears a tight black corset and belled petticoat, and practically nothing else. She smiles and says in a thick British accent, “Just a formality. You’ll show up in the system next time you come through, though.”

“Annabelle!” Jesse exclaims, going in for a cheek kiss. “I was wondering if you still had the run of the place.”

Annabelle says, “Someone has to keep all you hooligans in check.”

“We sure won’t do it ourselves.”

Annabelle eyes the rest of the group. “I see you are traveling with… unique company, these days.” There is an air of distaste to her tone.

“Don’t let her fool you,” Jesse says, nudging Mei with an elbow. “She hates everyone equally.”

“Not true, darling. I just hate everyone, but the degree to which I hate varies.” She stands aside and lets everyone enter. Winston sidles in sideways, and the door shuts and seals behind them. Where the day was cool verging on comfortable, it is slightly warm inside the building. Cozy. 

Inside, the lights are dim and dusty, but manufactured. The whole place has an air of antiquity about it, but not in the same way that Jesse McCree manages so effortlessly. It is a retro pastiche rather than an homage. 

Before Annabelle lets the group go, she pulls Jesse aside and whispers something, to which his eyes widen and his hand goes reflexively to his gun. His fingers twitch and he looks around the room.

“Pardon me, some unfinished business at the corner booth.” He strides off without another word, spurs clanking against his boots with every step.

“He’ll be a minute, dearies,” Annabelle says. “Can I bring you something to drink?”

Mei is so busy watching where Jesse has gone off to that she doesn’t register the question at first. When Winston clears his throat, Mei stammers, “W-what?”

“Drinks?”

“Oh, no thank you. Are you the… owner of this place? Jesse said we needed to get permission before traveling further into the badlands.”

“I would hate to say I own the place. I run it, certainly. I keep the peace when it would rather be free.”

Mei doesn’t quite understand her turn of phrase, but she nods. “So what do we need to do to pass through these gang territories unharmed?”

Before Annabelle can answer, Jesse’s voice comes over the din of player piano and cups rattling, angry and hostile.

Mei catches sight of him banging his fist on a corner booth, with a sharply pretty, white-haired woman in a mix of formal and cowboy attire, and a large Omnic with a tiny bowler hat and imitation facial hair sitting lazily in the booth.

“Keep the peace or it will be kept,” Annabelle warns, letting the group go without answering Mei’s question. Mei leads Winston and Angela over to Jesse, who stands up straight and scoffs.

“Just mind yourself around these two,” Jesse says as he sees Mei from the corner of his eye. 

“Mind yourself, McCree,” the woman says. She stands and offers her hand, very formal and polite, to Mei. Mei puts her hand out cautiously to shake, but the woman yanks her in close and whispers, “You’re not his type, dearie,” before letting her go. Jesse’s hand goes to his holster, but Mei holds her now free hand up and waves him away.

She says, “Thank you for the warning. You can call me Frostbite.”

The woman snorts laughter. “Ashe, and this here’s B.O.B. Say hello, B.O.B.”

The large Omnic’s metal mustache twitches and he waves cheerily at the group, but says nothing.

“Wow, he must like you,” Ashe says. “Normally it’s a finger instead of a hand.”

“Is there going to be a problem here?” Mei asks Jesse, who frowns and shakes his head.

“Just catching up with old friends. If they can make with the nice, so can I.”

“How’s my hoverbike, Jesse?” Ashe asks.

“ _ My _ bike rides a little left. If you’ll excuse me.” He tips his hat to Ashe and stalks away, leaving Mei standing awkwardly with Winston and Angela behind her.

“It was nice to meet you,” Mei says, trying to disengage.

“Word of advice, Frostbite?” Ashe gestures Mei closer, and Mei does despite herself.

Jesse’s voice suddenly comes through the comms. “Pharah, do you read?”

Mei struggles to pay attention to both conversations.

“Pharah reporting in, all quiet outside.”

Ashe says, “If it weren’t for the truce, we’d already have bullet holes and brains on the wall. Your friend owes me a heavy debt, and I mean to collect.”

Jesse says in the comms, “Keep an eye out for a goofy Omnic or a woman with white hair. If they go anywhere near my hoverbike, you holler.”

Mei says, “What debt could Jesse owe a couple of bandits?”

Angela clears her throat. “Actually, Frost--”

Ashe laughs. “You have some history to learn, my dear.” She sniffs. “You don’t smell dusty enough. Get some grit in your britches and maybe he’ll give you the time of day. It’s always high noon somewhere.”

“Roger that, Six-Gun. Pharah out.”

Mei frowns and hopes she isn’t blushing. Ashe says, “Now, if you’ll excuse the hell out of me, I have a meeting.”

And a dark-skinned man approaches, wrapped in a cloak, with a thin mustache, goatee, and a lopsided pile of short dreadlocks on his head. He’s quite handsome, but he looks wary and weary.

In a Central American or maybe Caribbean Islands accent, he says, “You are Ashe, yes?”

“You must be Baptiste,” Ashe says, holding her hand out daintily for the man to take. “I was just finishing up here. Let’s talk about your future.”

The man politely nods to Mei, then appears to notice Winston and Angela for the first time. His eyes widen and his hand goes under his cloak, but when Winston and Angela don’t react to him, his shoulders untense and he slumps into the corner booth opposite Ashe.

Winston pulls Mei to the side now that they are done talking to Ashe. “You should have Squire run a scan on that man’s features.”

“You know him?”

“Mercy nudged me. She thinks he’s a mercenary with ties to Talon.”

Talon. Mei groans. “On it. Thank you, W-- Zinj.”

Winston and Angela join Jesse at the bar, where Jesse is chatting up Annabelle. They seem overly familiar and Mei stuffs the spike of jealousy down into the pit of her stomach.

She finds a quiet corner and speaks softly into the comms. “HQ, come in.”

“Squire here. Sorry about the big oaf.”

“It’s okay. Can you run a check for me? Known Talon operatives or associates. Central American or Caribbean, maybe.” She finishes describing him as best she can before she remembers she could capture an image.

But before she can do that, Brigitte says, “There’s a few, but I’m sending you the dossier on who I think it is. Haitian. Latest intel says his name is Baptiste, and that he’s wanted for a number of crimes in association with Talon.”

Mei reads it on her holo tablet, making sure to keep her back to Baptiste, and sure enough, it’s him. There’s a long list of attacks, heists, skirmishes, attached to him. He looks like a pretty bad guy.

“Thanks, Squire. Keep an eye out on satellite; we might have more Talon in the area.”

“HQ, over. I’ll run some more scans.”

Mei pings her team on comms. “You were right, Zinj. He is a known associate for Talon.”

Angela says, “I knew he looked familiar. What do we do?”

Jesse answers, “We do nothin’. We’re in neutral territory, and if we go after Talon, every gang and criminal org in the area can come for us, carte blanche.”

“I think he is right,” Mei says, “It can be of no concern to us for now.”

Off the comms, Jesse says, “Pardon that interruption, Annabelle. As I was saying, we’re bartering safe passage through some few gang territories.” He waves a hand to Mei, and at first Mei doesn’t know what he wants.

Winston says, “I’m sure we can work something out. Do you accept digital transfers?”

Oh! Bribes. Right. Mei isn’t used to this side of operations. 

“Oh, my poor gorilla,” Annabelle says, laughing. “We accept virtually everything around here.” She eyes Angela and smiles. “But if you’re looking to travel inland and back out without anybody coming for you, you’ve come to the right place. You pay me, and I make sure the gangs stay off your backs, so long as you aren’t doing anything untoward.”

“Science mission,” Mei says.

“I’m sure it is, sweetie.”

It takes some back and forth, mostly Jesse and Annabelle flirting and persuading, but finally Annabelle takes her holo tablet off the counter, inspects the payment, and nods to the group.

“For a clandestine group of do-gooders, y’all have a pretty loud presence. No one will molest you in and out, today only. By midnight, you’re on your own.” She pats Jesse’s hand and says, “You can come by to pay the rest of your debt later.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Mei doesn’t know what that last exchange was all about, but their vibe is all romance.

“Heads up,” Pharah says from the comms. “There’s a big dude with an even bigger arm coming through the door. It looks like Akande.”

The inner seal opens and the Talon operative known as Doomfist ducks under the doorframe and steps in, rolling his neck and shoulders.

Winston immediately leaps, all caution and truce seemingly set aside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Baptiste, Doomfist, and Ashe/B.O.B. join the story!


	4. Take It On The Chin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mei diffuses the situation before they all get killed by bandits or Doomfist at the Hearts' Wrest waystation, but odd things keep happening in the bar that threaten to start a war.

“Stand down!” Mei yells, but it only takes a fraction of a second for her to realize that Winston is not in control. His jump pack fires haphazardly, and sends him flying near to Doomfist, but crashes into a table nearby instead. 

Guns and blasters and whips and all manner of weapons come to the ready all over the bar. Winston gets his jump pack to stop firing, and brushes himself off, staring daggers at Doomfist.

Doomfist says, “I thought I smelled peanut butter.”

Annabelle comes charging around the bar. “What part of neutral ground ain’t y’all understanding?”

Winston takes a deep breath. “This is a known terrorist.”

“Half the people in this bar are known terrorists.” Annabelle smirks. “You just haven’t met the other half yet.”

Through the comms, Mei says, “Zinj, stand down or you will get us all killed.”

Winston’s shoulders slump and his fingers leave the trigger on his tesla cannon. “We’ll pay for the table. And the chairs.” When Annabelle stares him down, he laughs awkwardly and rubs a hand on his head. “And some hazard pay for disrupting the peace.”

“Yes you will. Next time an ‘accident’ happens, you’ll find I’m less forgiving.”

The music begins again, and Doomfist smiles while all the patrons and criminals ease up on their weapons and go back to their business.

“Any other day, gorilla, I would be more than happy for a second round. But even Talon plays by the rules in this establishment.”

“See that you do.” Winston mumbles more curses that come through the comms, and Mei blushes to hear some of it.

“What was that?” Mei asks as he approaches their group. Meanwhile Doomfist approaches Ashe and Baptiste, looming over their table.

“Unclear. My jump pack seems to have malfunctioned.”

“Is it okay now?”

Winston scoffs. “It’s fine. I can’t believe we have to sit here and let the biggest terrorist threat in the country just walk around. We should be arresting him!”

Angela places a hand on his shoulder to calm him, and he shrugs it off. “I know you have history with him. So does Tracer. But do you really think we can attack him here and escape unharmed? You saw how itchy their trigger fingers are around here.”

Mei nods. “Mercy’s right. We got what we came for, and as soon as we settle the damage, we should be heading out.”

“Fine, fine.” Winston talks to Annabelle at the bar, adding more money to the woman’s digital coffers, while Mei inspects the room.

It’s unusual for Winston’s invention to go haywire so randomly. She whispers in the comms, “Pharah, has anyone else entered the bar besides us and Doomfist?”

“So it  _ is _ him,” Fareeha answers, angry. “Negative, Frostbite. The wind pushed open the saloon doors once, but that’s it. The dropship is getting a lot of attention, as well.”

“Keep your eye out, we had a short scuffle in here, but all is well. We are not moving against Talon.”

Suddenly there’s a commotion on the other end of the bar, with a couple of women and a man playing traditional five-card draw poker. One of the women stands up, throwing her beer in the face of the other woman, yelling about cheaters, and for the briefest moment Mei thinks she sees a shadow darting away from the table into a corner, but there are no shadows and nothing to hide behind.

“Squire, come in,” Mei says over comms.

“What’s up, Frostbite?” Brigitte asks. “We haven’t picked up any additional signals in the area.”

“I think we are about to have a problem. Watch for anything suspicious.”

“Anything?”

“Could be an unusual blip on radar, static where there wasn’t any before. I think someone is mess--”

But before Mei can finish, the man at the table pulls a shotgun from below, threatening both women. Annabelle’s rifle aims him down, as do several other thugs in the bar, but he doesn’t back down. Mei doesn’t know who, but someone fires a shot. 

The boom of the gun, the explosion of wood and plastic, the screams of the man with the shotgun. Annabelle tries to calm the crowd down, but Doomfist’s bionic arm winds up with a sound Mei has only heard in video, and Baptiste throws himself with some kind of jump boots out of the booth and into a crowd of onlookers just as Doomfist’s arm crushes the spot where Baptiste just was.

The onlookers punch and kick Baptiste, who curls into a ball. Ashe and B.O.B. jump from their seats, guns ready.

The wire-taut tension snaps and the bar erupts into chaos. Shots are fired, flames roar over the bar, glasses shatter every which way. Winston throws himself in front of Mei and Angela, dropping his barrier projector around them just as shots are fired in their direction.

Mei doesn’t know what to do. This isn’t their fault, but the truce seems to be broken. They have precious few seconds before Winston’s barrier will fizzle out, and the only thing she can think to do is escape.

Over comms she hisses, “Overwatch retreat! The bar has destabilized and everyone is fighting. Pharah, prepare for combat.”

“Roger, Frostbite.”

Winston turns to Mei. “Now might be our only chance to get him!”

Mei’s heart lurches. Overridden in the field. She starts to nod, happy to let him take over, but then the barrier closes down and they’re vulnerable again. Doomfist smirks as he launches up into the rafters. Ashe and B.O.B. run over to help the unconscious Baptiste. Annabelle and her flunkies struggle to shut down all this chaos and violence, but the bar just gets more destroyed as tables splinter and chairs disintegrate into ash.

Winston leaps into the rafters, his anger and vendetta getting the best of him. Angela’s Valkyrie wings spread wide and she shoots up after him, leaving Mei and Jesse crouched beside the bar, their weapons at the ready.

“First time for everything,” Jesse says. “You okay?”

Mei nods, stealing glances around the edge of the bar. The exit is close, but if Winston is in charge now, the mission is no longer to retrieve data, but to capture Doomfist. Dead or alive.

“Looks like the parameters have changed,” she says. She catches sight of Ashe and B.O.B. dragging an unconscious Baptiste out of a broken window.

“She doesn’t seem all bad,” Mei says, motioning to Ashe. Jesse swears under his breath.

“Oh, she’s all, all right. She’s about to steal my hoverbike and add kidnapping to her list of crimes.” Through the comms he says, “Pharah, heads up, white hair and mustache are outside, they have a hostage.”

“I see them. They--” She cuts off as shots fire outside. “--The big one is laying down cover fire. Request assistance.”

“On it,” Jesse says, dashing away from Mei without a glance back or anything. He vanishes through a broken window.

Mei crouches there feeling confused and useless. A body crashes into a stool near her and she yelps in surprise. It’s one of Annabelle’s thugs. Mei looks up to see if she can spot Winston or Angela, but it’s dark up there and Winston’s tesla cannon sparks, causing a strobe effect that makes it impossible to see.

Mei thinks to follow Jesse, but the bar is in lockdown now and even the holes in the windows seal off with electromagnetic barriers, which absorb the shots being fired. 

She aims her blaster, turns the dial, and lets loose a torrent of ice that bisects the floor, creating a giant wall of ice up to the rafters. The ice wall separates the majority of the gang members from Annabelle and her security force, causing a temporary lull while Annabelle shouts about her bar being ruined.

The gang members spot Mei and close in, and in her panic she stands up, stumbles backward, and falls over the bar, landing harshly on her cryo container, getting several deep gashes in her side, arms, and legs from glasses and bottles broken all over the place.

Through comms Brigitte says, “Satellite shows the place going up like Christmas. Team Rocket Pop, report.”

Mei huffs. “Zinj is in charge now. The OP has changed.”

Winston roars from above, and Angela comes dropping down next to Mei. “Let’s see what we can do about these cuts.” She taps her staff, and a wave of golden energy spreads across Mei, sealing up her cuts and easing her bruised bones.

“There’s more of them out there,” Mei says.

Angela pulls her sidearm and folds her wings down. “I’m more concerned about what’s happening outside.”

“Why?”

“I saw Pharah and Six-Gun chasing after Ashe on his hoverbike. They took the Haitian gentleman.”

“Baptiste,” Mei says, stumbling over the pronunciation.

Doomfist’s arm winds up again, and Mei’s ice wall shatters, sending melting shards flying. People slip and fall or get knocked out by chunks of ice. Annabelle jumps behind the bar, grinning at Angela and Mei as she does. 

“I don’t suppose y’all are paying for this, too?” she asks, shooting and ducking.

It takes a few seconds, but between Doomfist and Winston destroying everything around them, Angela and Annabelle shooting from behind the bar, and the general chaos and destruction of Mei’s ice wall, everything calms down. Thugs and gang members are downed all over the bar. Some are no doubt dead.

“Zinj, I need an exit!” Angela shouts, leaping over the bar, her Valkyrie wings spreading as she flies over to the nearest wall. Winston leaps for the wall, connecting with it and collapsing a hole neatly the size of himself. Angela zips through it and disappears outside, while Winston turns his angry gorilla gaze upon everyone still standing.

Doomfist looks unimpressed as he dances back and forth in a boxer’s stance, having taken out the rest of the gang members.

In his Nigerian accent he says, “Are you ready for round three?” 

Mei runs out from behind the bar, thinking to try and diffuse the situation, but Winston snarls and leaps, his tesla cannon sending out spidery tendrils as Doomfist leaps up and away. Mei sighs and turns to Annabelle, but the woman is slumped over on the bar, unconscious, and an operative of Talon that is only known by image disappears in a purple flash. Their elite hacker and infiltrator is on site, and must have been the reason for Winston’s malfunctioning jump pack, and the distraction among the poker players.

Mei gives chase, because if it’s not her mission anymore, it’s time to save lives and stop Talon. How she’ll fight an invisible foe, she has no idea.


	5. You're Taking This Very Seriously

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mei fights against Sombra while the rest of the team is scattered chasing Doomfist and Ashe.

Winston and Doomfist crash and zap in the rafters, with occasional loose timber and shrapnel falling down below. Mei doesn’t know who is alive and who is merely unconscious in all the debris in the bar, but more important than that, she has no idea where the Talon operative known as Sombra might be hiding, and all the noise from outside and up top makes it impossible to hear her footfalls.

Mei fires in the direction of a passing shadow, but the icicle shatters against the barrier on the window. A soft chuckle emanates from somewhere behind her, way too close for comfort, as if Sombra is breathing down her neck, and Mei spins, firing wildly again, almost connecting with a passed out thug before it embeds in the wooden bar.

A voice calls out, from everywhere and nowhere, “You can do better than that,  _ Mei Mei _ .” 

Mei switches tactics and sprays the room with her endothermic blaster, spreading frost and icy particles in a fine mist all around her, where it settles on the wood floor, creating a quickly-melting slurry. She spins in a circle, trying to see where Sombra will approach from, and catches footsteps appearing out of nowhere, approaching her.

Mei sprays the area, emptying her blaster, but if she catches Sombra in the wave of cryogenic ice, she won’t need to worry about an immediate recharge from the canister on her back.

The spray settles on the ground in the path that Sombra should have been taking, covering the footprints already there. No new prints surface. She’s an acrobat, not a flyer, and avoiding all this mess should be hard, but Sombra is making it look easy.

“Why don’t you come out and fight fair?” Mei asks the room, goading Sombra. She initiates the recharge on her blaster, but it takes several seconds and she’s vulnerable while her blaster is out of commission. 

From across the room, where there’s no frost on the ground, Sombra giggles. Something splinters and breaks free from above, with Doomfist grunting loudly. HIs body appears momentarily at the stairwell leading to the upstairs rooms, and then he launches back out of sight, grinning. 

Sombra’s voice registers from somewhere across the bar, near the ice wall that’s still melting all over the place. “A fair fight is just the winning side being charitable. Tell me, Mei-Ling Zhou, was it a fair fight when you woke up in Antarctica all alone? Or did you persevere and make that blizzard work for you?”

Mei doesn’t answer. Her face heats up and she feels her anger building. Part of her rationalizes that Sombra’s baiting her, but the other part--the part that was overridden as the leader of this mission, the part that always apologizes even if it isn’t her fault--wants blood. She wants to teach Sombra a lesson.

The invisible woman chuckles again, this time from right beside her, and when Mei spins to spray, the blaster fizzles and only a few drops leak out, creating ice crystals as they plop to the wood floor. Not recharged yet? No. Sombra must have done something to it.

Mei attempts to retreat, but Sombra doubles the pressure on her and appears, her hair purple at the end and dark brown at the roots, flipped to one side with a side-shave. She has an uzi, but isn’t aiming it at the moment. She is almost humorously color-coordinated with her makeup, outfit, and hair all in shades of purple, but Mei quickly discovers why she likes that color. The readout on Mei’s holo tablet turns purple with a stylized purple sugar skull icon, and Mei’s data readout goes on the fritz before Sombra giggles and vanishes in a digital fracturing of her surroundings. 

Mei stares at the place Sombra just was, wishing she had a proper weapon. Or infrared goggles. Anything that might change the odds in her favor.

She says into comms, “Sombra is here. Zinj is occupied and I’m losing.” What should she be asking for? Winston’s support? Pharah’s backup? 

Before she can complete the thought, Pharah’s voice comes through comms. “The target Ashe and her butler bot have stolen Six-Gun’s hoverbike. We are giving chase to stop their abduction of the Talon agent Baptiste.”

They’re getting spread out, and Winston is preoccupied with an old vendetta. Too many things are happening at once, and Mei needs to just extract. But any attempts to do so are met with subtle hacks on the bar, on any wearable tech. 

Mei does the only thing she can think to do. She waits until Sombra reveals herself in some way, which ends up being a tap on the shoulder. Because Mei has conditioned herself to always react to the opposite direction when her shoulder is tapped--thanks to fellow climatologist Agnes* Arrhenius in Antarctica who thought it was the height of hilarity--she throws a bar stool in the direction Sombra actually is instead of where she wanted Mei to think she is.

The bar stool connects with a satisfying thud to empty air, and Sombra collapses to the ground a few feet from Mei, reappearing with a dazed but angry expression on her face.

Mei moves to secure the woman, but Sombra immediately lifts her uzi to point in Mei’s general direction. 

Mei panics and attempts to create an ice wall, forgetting that her endothermic blaster has been hacked. Instead of forming at the location she is pointing, it fires a blast of icicles that recoil on her blaster and shove her back, so hard she trips backwards and falls out of the hole Winston created for Mercy, losing grip of her blaster in the process.

She topples to the hardpan outside, nearly losing her breath as she scuttles to safety. The hose whips free from the blaster, coming to rest next to Mei. Sombra’s gun fires from inside the Hearts’ Wrest, but it isn’t penetrating the outer shell of the building and Mei breathes deeply, trying to focus.

In the comms she says, “Squire, things have gone bad out here. I am going to detach the rover from the sensor equipment and try to regroup with Pharah and the others.”

Brigitte answers, “Negative, Frostbite. We can’t leave the dropship alone in bandit territory.”

She has nearly forgotten about the dropship, even though it takes up an impressive amount of space next to the Hearts’ Wrest. She needs to make a decision. 

“Acknowledged.”

The gangs and bandits outside the Hearts’ Wrest look to have made themselves scarce once Talon showed up, and Mei dashes over to the sensor equipment. She doesn’t know where Sombra is, but she can see Mercy and Pharah zipping around a kilometer or so away in the sky. Rockets and gunfire and for some reason dynamite are going off, and McCree is nowhere to be seen.

“All field agents, report,” Mei says. She may have been overridden by Winston, but he’s busy not being a leader and she needs desperately to regain some semblance of order.

“Six-Gun here, enjoying a friendly chase through a canyon.”

Pharah says, “Mercy and Pharah are accounted for, eyes in the sky.”

Winston doesn’t answer in comms, but a loud boom echoes out from the Hearts’ Wrest, and Winston’s body comes shooting out of it, uncontrolled, to land in a heap near a pile of scraps by the road. He slowly pushes up off the ground and dusts off his tesla cannon, and makes to jump back in when Mei pings just his comms.

“Zinj, if you’re in charge, then act like you’re in charge!”

He pauses, and turns to face her. He’s lost his glasses somewhere during the fighting, and there’s a rage in his eyes. He’s almost completely given over to the primal side of his nature, but Mei keeps on.

“If you keep this up, we are going to lose agents. Did you even hear me say that Sombra is here, too?”

He leaps into the air back towards the Hearts’ Wrest, and she huffs in frustration, but his trajectory actually lands him at the dropship, and within moments it is cycling up for flight.

Over comms he says, “Frostbite, get the rover and regroup. And you have my apologies.” He trails off at that last, but Mei heaves a big sigh of relief, wiping away sweat she didn’t realize was there.

“Roger that, Zinj.”

All she’s got to do is get the rover moving before Sombra or Doomfist come after her. That or maybe someone else from Talon. She double-checks the sensing equipment to make sure it’s holding up, and makes the decision to activate Snowball. Without her blaster, she only has one delivery method for her frost spray available, and she needs a weapon.

Snowball whirs to life from the cradle of the sensing equipment, and lifts up, digital eyes blinking sleepily. 

Mei says, “No time to act cute, doofus. We must follow the dropship.”

Snowball immediately reverts to its normal operation before settling into the cradle on Mei’s pack, but remains alert. Mei hops into the driver’s seat and takes off, the ride bumpy but manageable on these disused roads.

She sees Doomfist standing in the wake of the Hearts’ Wrest, watching her leave. Sombra appears next to him and waves as Mei puts distance between her and Talon.

In the comms she says, “Talon appears to be standing down. Fighting with us lost them their objective.”

McCree answers, “Tangling with them might lose OUR objective.” A rifle shot cracks nearby from his comms, and he says, “Whoa! That dang near lit the cigarette in my mouth.”

Winston says, “Frostbite, we have our permission from Hearts’ Wrest, not that it might do us any good after what happened. Should we disengage and complete the mission?”

“All due respect, big fella,” McCree says, “I’m getting my bike back.”

Mei recognizes the cue from Winston. “I believe we should stop Six-Gun’s associates from abducting a member of Talon. Baptiste can be useful intel if we rescue him.”

Winston sighs in the comms. “Very well.” She hears the disappointment in his voice, but whether it’s at her, himself, or just the whole situation, she can’t tell.

Mei asks for reports from the team, and Pharah responds. “We are leaving the canyon now, headed south by southwest on my location signature. Six-Gun took a bandit’s motorcycle, with actual wheels like the rover, and is giving chase. The lady is fleeing on Six-Gun’s hover, and the omnic is driving a cart with a hard-light cage containing our Talon friend. If they get to open ground, nothing but the dropship can keep up.”

Mei considers all this. “Squire, what is the terrain like in Ashe’s heading?”

Brigitte takes a moment to search and comes back with, “Open plain for a while, dusty and cracked. Then it drops off a sheer cliff face into some rocky badlands that’ll be hard to maneuver, even for a hoverbike. Lots of places to hide.”

So they have to stop them before getting to the rocky badlands. Mei forms a plan, but it’s going to take everyone, and a lot of luck, if they want to rescue this Baptiste without getting him killed in the process. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will feature a chase sequence!
> 
> * No first name is given for any of Mei’s crew in Antarctica, so I made up the first name Agnes.  


	6. Burn It All Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mei enacts a hasty plan to rescue Baptiste from the would-be-abductors Ashe and B.O.B., and a chase through the badlands of Texas ensues.

The team is at a distinct disadvantage using wheeled transports against the hover bike and cart, but with any luck, Mei can turn that into an advantage.

She speeds along the dusty hardpan, heading in the direction she last saw Pharah and Mercy in the sky, while Winston loops around in the dropship. Occasional gunfire erupts, and Mei knows this is a dangerous mission.

“Pharah, Zinj, we need to slow down the hover bikes while they’re on the plains. Coordinate with Squire and use satellite data to force them through a difficult route.”

Pharah says in comms, “Acknowledged, Frostbite. Good to have you joining the fight.”

Winston likewise acknowledges, and Mei follows the dropship’s trajectory as it drops below the canyons on the other side, hidden from Mei.

“Squire,” Mei says, entering the canyon, weaving around debris and exploded rubble that are telltale signs of the chase, “Look for a narrow passage we can force Ashe into. The parameters will follow.”

She runs some calculations in her head based on what she thinks will happen, and Brigitte says, “Tall order, but I am taller. Give me a minute and I’ll ping everyone’s locations.”

Mei waits, leaving the chill corridor of the canyon back into sunlight, and sees a vast, flat plain stretching out before her, with the occasional ramshackle building or stone formation dotting the landscape. Dust clouds rise in the distance. Pharah is in the sky alone, firing rockets well in advance of Ashe, forcing her to swerve and slow down.

Brigitte returns on the comms. “Squire here, I think I have your location, Frostbite. It’s tricky, though. If we mess it up, Ashe and her omnic will almost definitely get away. Or be really dead.”

Mei grimaces. They’re all putting lives and equipment on the line, and any one part could go wrong and ruin everything. She hopes she knows what she’s doing. 

She spies Angela and Jesse riding the vintage wheeled motorcycle. Angela’s Valkyrie suit has its wings retracted and she’s actually steering, while Jesse takes aim with his revolver, attempting to knock out the power on the hovers.

The cowboy and the angel, the sword and the shield. Mei crams her jealousy down deep; there’ll be time to wish it was her on that bike later.

She pulls up beside them, and Jesse gives her a wink and a nod before turning back to the high speed gun battle. Shots spang off the windscreen on the rover, and B.O.B. shrugs apologetically as he swerves around a big rock. Baptiste is awake, but can’t do anything from inside the hard-light cage.

Over comms Mei says, “I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but Six-Gun, you need to jump over here!”

He answers, “I’m a little preoccupied, maybe we can do the death-defying stunts later?”

“I need someone to drive while I modify a weapon. Six-Gun or Mercy, either one.”

Jesse and Angela share a glance, smirk, and she pulls up right next to the rover before Jesse hops off and into the passenger seat. 

Mei slows down a little and they awkwardly change positions while Jesse holds the steering wheel steady. The wind whips at Mei’s face as she stands in the back seat and taps Snowball in her backpack cradle. “Time to earn your keep, doofus.”

The little robot whirs to life and Mei helps it down behind the windscreen before it gets swept away.

“So what’s the plan, Miss Leader?” Jesse asks. He has one hand on the wheel and one on his revolver, waiting for a good shot. Mei glances out from the back seat. 

“Time to the trap point?” she asks in comms. 

“Less than two minutes,” Zinj says.

Two minutes. Okay, she can do this. 

She powers down Snowball and routes her blaster hose into the coolant port, then modifies it slightly to a wide area spray. 

Something like her blaster’s freezing spray, but in a controlled area of effect. She thinks it will work. 

It has to work.

“Okay!” she yells. “Jesse, I need us to get in front of Ashe.” He nods and presses the pedal down as hard as he can, but they appear to be at top speed.

Over comms she says, “What is the term? Corral. Mercy, Pharah, Zinj, force Ashe into those rocks at the top of the bluff up ahead. If we plan it right, they’ll both be forced to drive at us. We’ll be trying to pull up beside and ahead of her.”

“Seems dangerous,” Jesse says as the others all respond affirmatives through the comms. 

“Sorry in advance,” Mei replies.

She pings just Pharah and Mercy. “Be prepared to… I do not really know. I would appreciate not falling off the upcoming cliff.”

Pharah snorts, but they both acknowledge the directive.

Rockets and dropships narrow the available paths that Ashe and B.O.B. can take. They weave left and right as they race up a mild incline. The wheeled vehicles struggle to make the speed, but slowly, Pharah’s rockets give Jesse and Mei the chance to pull up beside Ashe. The white-haired woman glares at the two of them as she tries to race ahead again, but no luck.

She holds out her rifle, but it clicks. Empty. 

Mei thinks this is lucky right up until she pulls out a bundle of dynamite instead, and lights a fuse while keeping the bike steady.

“I’d rather not kill you, Jesse, but you’re gettin’ on my nerves!” she shouts, and before anyone can do anything else, she lobs the dynamite through the air, where its arc is going to drop it right into the back seat. A loud boom, and the dynamite explodes midair, its concussive blast rocking the rover and the hoverbike. The payload on the back of the rover swings precariously, yanking the rover left and right, and Mei nearly falls out of the back seat before catching the roll bar. Jesse pulls back the revolver, smoke emanating from the barrel.

The rover stabilizes and speeds ahead. They’re approaching the cliff and running out of room to drive. The hovers can take a drop off a cliff like this; emergency thrusters maintain its altitude and slowly bring them to where the anti-grav tech can take over again. The wheeled rover and the bike will just crash and burn, with whoever is riding it.

Mei wakes Snowball up and says, “Put us between her and the cliff, Six-Gun!”

He drives on, cutting her off and then says, “I sure hope this works, or we’re gonna have a very long talk in a very short fall.”

The last of Fareeha’s rockets and Winston’s maneuvering to keep them penned in completes. They have only one path and it’s straight through the path Mei is on. She clambers over the back of the rover and onto the payload, holding precariously onto it with one hand and holding Snowball in the other.

Snowball’s coolant exhaust faces out behind her, and she whispers, “I hope this doesn’t hurt too much.”

She overrides its safety protocols and turns the cryo hose on full blast. A digitized gargling sound erupts out of Snowball as the cryo liquid hits air and begins to freeze. It sprays out like a fire hose, whipping around in Mei’s one hand until she has to hold it with both to direct its spray. 

A localized blizzard rains down on Ashe and B.O.B., and with nowhere to go, they attempt to spin or turn, only for the cryo liquid to settle on their bodies, on their vehicles. It swarms around and slows the vehicles, such that their tech ceases functioning and they crash to the ground, coming to rest dozens of feet from the cliff’s edge, with them skidding off and flaking ice as they tumble.

The cliff’s edge! Mei turns to see Jesse barreling towards it, and just as she thinks to grab something to hold onto, he slams on the brakes and her forward momentum sends her flying through the air and over the cliff’s edge, her grip on Snowball and anything to save her lost in the moment.

Voices swarm her ears as the comms erupt in worry and fear. She vaguely hears Jesse swearing, and she has the briefest moment where she’s airborne and before she begins to fall, that she closes her eyes and thinks she’s done a good job, that she saved the hostage. That she can live with, as the saying goes. 

Then her stomach drops out of her belly and she plummets to the jagged badlands below.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late chapter this week! I was at a comic-con manning a vendor table for a friend all weekend, and now I'm in the process of moving to a new house, so everything started to slide.
> 
> Next chapter, the primary objective takes primary focus once again.
> 
> You can follow me on Twitter @rick_cook_jr to get updates and impending posting schedules for Mei MIssions, and my other longfic Carol Danvers AU. Follow to get random musings on fics I'm writing, or fics I'd like to write!
> 
> https://twitter.com/rick_cook_jr
> 
> https://twitter.com/rick_cook_jr


	7. I Don't Really Do "Associates"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Overwatch team must decide what to do with Ashe, B.O.B., and Baptiste, now that the immediate dangers have passed.

Mei plummets, eyes closed against the onrushing ground, waiting for the moment of impact.

A jet engine roars beside her suddenly and Pharah scoops her up with one arm awkwardly around Mei’s coolant canister on her back and one arm under her knees. Catching her arrests their downward momentum slightly. Mei clutches Pharah’s armor, heedless of where the burning fuel is coming from her pack. She will have time later to reflect on how lucky she is not to have burned her hands off.

But Pharah’s jetpack isn’t designed to carry a complete second person, and it struggles to slow their descent.

“Hold on, Mei-Mei!” Fareeha shouts, overcharging her jetpack and dropping to the ground at the base of the cliff. She spins Mei around as the heels of her boots connect and dig into the hardpan, her thruster firing down and back the direction they had fallen. Dust and gravel plume up and Fareeha grits her teeth inside her helmet, but she holds her ground and they stop moving. Her thrusters die away and Mei realizes she’s got her face buried in Pharah’s armor plating, and she peeks out.

The dust begins to settle and Fareeha heaves breaths, retracting the faceplate on her helmet. Her raven hair is disheveled and plastered across her face with sweat. Mei reaches out a hand to her friend’s face without thinking, pushing the hair out of her eyes.

Fareeha grins, catching her breath, and groans a little as she helps Mei to stand. As soon as Mei is on the ground she throws her arms around her friend again in a hug.

Tears come. In the moment, Mei was acting on pure instinct and need, but now that she’s just fallen to her almost death, the adrenaline drains out of her and her knees go weak. She sobs, and lets herself be guided to a kneeling position. 

“You’re okay, Mei-Mei,” Fareeha soothes. She pulls the gauntlet gloves off and strokes Mei’s hair. “Everyone’s okay. We did it. You did it.”

Mei nods while attempting to rein her emotions in. “I thought I was dead. I was so stupid.”

“Shhh,” Fareeha says. “You put yourself in danger to save another, to complete the mission. If you’re stupid, the entirety of Overwatch are a bunch of morons.”

Mei laughs through her cries, and the comms are freaking out. Mei eventually wipes her tears and pings the group. “Frostbite here, all alive down below.” Her voice is shaky but she’s got her sobs under control. She can have time for all that later. “Did we catch the bad guys, save the maybe bad guy, and keep the payload from being destroyed?”

Winston speaks up, “Good to hear you’re okay down there. Six-Gun and Mercy have secured the Deadlock Gang members Ashe and B.O.B., and we are currently attempting to free the Talon operative known as Baptiste.”

Jesse says in comms, “You’d think creating a snowstorm out of nowhere would mess up the hard light tech, but it’s going strong.”

“We might need extraction, Zinj. Pharah’s jetpack is depleted.”

 

It takes some time, but Winston retrieves Mei and Fareeha. They settle down on the cliff’s edge while the sun tracks across the sky, casting pale orange to pink as it lowers towards the horizon.

They have Ashe and B.O.B. secured with maglocks and their weapons removed. They are covered in scrapes and bruises, and their clothing has become damp from the melting snow. They are a little frostbitten, it seems, but nothing lasting. Mei notes that and wishes her blaster was not such a good weapon. 

Baptiste has been freed, but is likewise shackled. He doesn’t seem perturbed by it, now that he’s conscious and not actively being kidnapped by bandits.

Mei stands over Ashe and B.O.B., not sure what they’re going to do with them. She’s technically in charge again, but the fate of criminals is not something she signed up to contemplate. Ashe smiles viciously at Mei through her gag and would sure have words for the woman if she could speak.

“Zinj, what will we do with them?” she asks.

Winston trundles over, cleaning his glasses as he walks awkwardly on just his legs. The image of a gorilla cleaning his glasses has been stuck with Mei ever since the first time he did it in front of her, and she stifles a giggle. 

Winston peers at the pair of them after his glasses are clean. “They’re criminals, and Squire confirmed they’re wanted by several state authorities. We can turn them in anonymously.”

“Wouldn’t it help Overwatch if we turned them in officially?” 

Winston grunts. “I have considered it, believe me. But we’re in a precarious position. Overwatch is still fresh in the minds of the public, and of the policy-makers, and it was with disgrace that it shut down in the first place. No, when we’re ready to reveal ourselves, it will not be with vigilante action asking for recognition.”

Mei’s mouth shuts. She hadn’t fully considered the ramifications of Overwatch’s past in trying to bring them legitimacy now. She nods.

Jesse strolls over, thumbs hooked into his belt. He winks at Mei and Mei averts her eyes, looking instead at Baptiste, sitting on the ground peacefully, awaiting whatever fate is dealt him.

Jesse says, “Now I know I didn’t just hear you talk about turning over this fine, upstanding citizen to the authorities, did I?”

Winston stares at him, a slack-jawed expression on his face. “Fine, upstanding? They abducted a man and tried to blow you up.”

“Who hasn’t tried to blow us up at some point?”

“Innocent people,” Mei says, and Jesse shoots her a small grin.

He shrugs. “I never said she was innocent, but listen. I owe her a debt, from back in the day. I mean to pay it in full right now, if you’ll allow it.”

“They’re criminals, McCree!” Winston hisses. “We exist to deal with threats to our world.”

Ashe giggles through her gag, and B.O.B. shrugs his shoulders.

“Look, my friend, there’s every reason to turn them in to the authorities and let ‘em hang, so to speak. I acknowledge that much. But Ashe here has a real name, and tell me if you’ve heard it before. Elizabeth Caledonia.”

It is Mei’s turn to shrug now, but Winston’s eyes go wide. “She’s a Caledonia?”

“Are they important?” Mei asks.

Jesse nods. “If the most powerful and influential corporate consultants this country has ever seen aren’t important, then I don’t know what is.”

Winston’s shoulders sag. “I still think we should turn them in. Let the courts fight it out.”

“And drag your names through the mud? Elizabeth here may be the lowly leader of a bandit gang, but she’s also got the best lawyers money and fame can buy. Ya gotta be reasonable here, pal.”

Winston is at odds with himself, Mei can clearly see. His face contorts in anger and confusion, and he looks ready to pounce on something, or someone.

Mei steps in. “I think Jesse is right, Wi-- Zinj,” she corrects at the last second. “If we turn her in, and her family is as powerful as you both say, Overwatch will not stand a chance. We’ll be shut down by injunctions and court orders long before we’ve ever proven we deserve a second chance.”

Winston harrumphs and turns from the bandits. “Just… don’t let me see them go free. I’ll be interrogating Mr. Augustin. We should be safe for another couple of hours. How close are we to the spot you want to collect climate data from?”

Mei considers. “I’ll have Squire run some calculations, but a few kilometers at most.”

“Take Pharah and Six-Gun after Miss Caledonia is dealt with, and complete the original mission. Mercy and I will deal with Baptiste.”

“Yes, sir,” Mei says, saluting. 

It takes a few minutes, but Jesse unties Ashe and B.O.B., and gives them the wheeled motorcycle he chased them on. Ashe leans in real close to Jesse, whispers in his ears, but whatever is said doesn’t seem to affect him much. She kisses his cheek, pats his other cheek with a hand, and they mount the motorcycle.

She waves to Mei as she revs the engine. “Good luck, little weather girl. Maybe you can match his coldness.” Before Mei can respond, she revs the engine loudly again, and B.O.B. holds onto her waist as they speed off down the incline and away into the coming dusk.

Jesse has her weapons, and he holsters the rifle on the Deadlock Gang hover bike he apparently stole from Ashe at some point.

“Never really been a fan of long guns,” he says, turning to Mei. “Mayhaps I can sell it for scrap.”

“It’s a very nice gun,” Mei says, feeling awkward now that the danger is passed and he’s being his usual charming self.

“You’re right. Maybe over a mantle someday. Do you have a mantle in your home?”

Mei turns away to hide her face, and Jesse chuckles. Angela splits off from helping Fareeha clean up the mess Mei made in the rover, and joins Winston in talking to Baptiste. Mei wishes she could be part of that conversation, but they have only so much daylight left.

"I thought you said you dropped your blaster," Pharah says, leaning against the rover in an awkward position because of her armor and jetpack.

Mei nods. "When I was being shot at by a hacker, of all the crazy things."

Pharah lifts an object off the seat behind her. "Then how did it get here?"

Mei stares at it for a few seconds before recognition hits her. How did it get in the back seat? Then she figures it out. 

“It is probably compromised. We cannot take it with us until we know if it has a tracker or some software alterations.” Fortunately there isn’t much of a computer presence in her blaster. Not much to hack, but Sombra proved she was more than capable of sabotaging weapons during their fight.

“Leave it in the dropship for now,” Jesse suggests. “We have a trail to ride.”

Fareeha groans good-naturedly at his cowboy affectations, but they all load up into the rover and take off for the location that Squire marks out for them.

 

Winston and Angela discuss their tactics on dealing with Baptiste, but it all goes out the window when the man frowns at the pair of them. He has not been gagged like Ashe was. “If you are not here to kill me, then I suggest you let me free.”

Winston looks to Angela, and she looks back with placid unconcern. 

Winston starts, “You’re a known Talon operative, Mr. Augustin--”

“Just Baptiste is fine. I do not deserve my family name anymore.”

“Why not?” Angela asks, taking a seat on the ground across from him, regardless of what it’ll do to her white uniform.

“You must know all about me and my actions under Talon. Many have suffered, many have died. My family should not share in my shame. So please, just Baptiste.”

Winston tinkers idly with his Tesla cannon and asks, “So you fled the organization that had you intimidate, steal, and kill, because you grew a conscience? Is that it?

“I have always had a conscience, Winston.” He smiles. “Yes, I know all your names. You are Angela, and the others are Jesse McCree, Mei-Ling Zhou, and Fareeha Amari--daughter of the great Egyptian assassin Ana Amari.”

Winston isn’t sure what to make of that, but he supposes the enemy would have spies and dossiers on all of Overwatch, just as they have on Talon and other terrorist groups. 

“I don’t understand, then,” Angela says. “Why did you… defect? Is that what you did?”

“As good a term as any. Talon started off different, do you know this?”

Winston huffs. “Talon has always been full of terrorists.”

“Perhaps by the definition of the United Nations. But when I joined Talon, it was on missions of peace in war-torn regions. War-torn by the very people charged with protecting their citizens. Talon went where official missions could not go. We took out drug-lords, mafias, dangerous cults.”

Winston thinks this sounds far too similar to Blackwatch, but stays silent.

Baptiste goes on, “Over time, the missions changed. The leaders shifted their alliances. Some leaders were taken out.” Here he pauses and Angela has the good grace to look uncomfortable. “Soon enough, Akande, the man you know as Doomfist, seized power. And with him came a revolution. The goal is no longer to protect the weak. The goal is no longer to stop the corrupt. Truth, I do not understand the goal. It all seems at odds with itself.” He scratches his forehead and sighs. “I was soon performing violence against people whom I do not think deserved it. Against entire regions whose only sin was being caught in Talon’s grip.”

Winston clears his throat. “If what you say is true, can you provide us with intelligence on Talon? Any bases, people we do not know, plans they are preparing to enact?”

Baptiste nods. “I can tell you what I know, but it is precious little. Information is fragmented within Talon, and only Akande truly knows the whole story. And perhaps the little hacker girl.”

Angela speaks up. “Say you were to escape right now, Baptiste--what would you do? Would you wander and look for work? You were meeting with bandits in a bandit den, which is at odds with your stated morality.”

Baptiste shakes his head. “I exercise poor judgment when I should be suspicious. At first I was just trying to stay off Talon’s radar, disappear, but I heard about a woman recruiting for jobs, and figured if they weren’t too violent, I could make some money and flee the continent.”

“Instead you got abducted and would probably be back in Doomfist’s hands were it not for us,” Winston finishes for him.

“Just so. I understand if you wish to turn me in to the federal authorities. I am wanted for many crimes, and nearly all of them I am guilty. I was merely trying to find my way to positive actions, to make lives better instead of worse.”

Angela stands and beckons Winston with a bob of her head, smiles at Baptiste, and walks away. Winston double-checks the manacles on Baptiste and steps away, too.

“He tells a sad story,” Winston says once they reach the dropship and have privacy.

“Not just sad. Can you imagine feeling boxed in by your misdeeds when all you wanted to do was help?”

“It isn’t difficult,” Winston says, arms crossing in front of his chest stubbornly. “You either do good, or you do bad.”

Angela’s brows rise. “You are not swayed by his tale at all?”

“Why should I be? Overwatch going dark was almost entirely due to Talon pushing and pushing, forcing us to take bigger risks, commit more brash actions, to try and stop them.”

“And you don’t see the truth of his words in our own story? Winston, we lost control of Blackwatch when Moira and Gabe became frustrated with strictures and rules. Moira, for all her faults, just wants to progress science. She has no compunction about torture and murder to make progress. Her influence surely led Gabriel to do what he did. Their inability to force change. They turned dark because it was the most expedient means to effect change. Baptiste is the other side of that coin.”

Winston harrumphs again. “Maybe. What are you suggesting? We let him go? I’ve already let terrorists and thieves go today, Angela, I don’t wish to free another.”

Angela puts an arm on Winston’s shoulder and squeezes. “I’m saying we should hire him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to go in this Mission! Expect a big, fluffy, friends chapter to close out this arc and prepare us for what comes next!


	8. Clear Skies, Full Hearts, Can't Lose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The mission comes to a close, with Mei completing her data collection and spending time post-mission with her new friends.

The rover clatters over the hardpan as they follow the GPS provided by Brigitte over comms. It’s several kilometers out from where Winston and Angela are interrogating Baptiste, and Mei hopes it is going well.

Mei drives, with Fareeha in the back due to her armor, and Jesse riding shotgun, almost literally with Ashe’s rifle slung over his shoulder. Dusk will be along within the hour, and that changes the calculations Mei wants to gather, so she is hoping to beat the darkness.

Jesse clears his throat. “Turns out that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Overwatch is around for a few minutes and all hell breaks loose.”

Fareeha flicks his cowboy hat so that it falls forward a little. “We had nothing to do with that bar fight, right?”

Mei nods, glancing at Fareeha in the rearview mirror. “The hacker girl started it, and we just ended up in the crossfire.”

“You have to admit it’s curious, though,” Jesse continues. “There’s always some kind of commotion every time the old crew gets together.”

The old crew. Does Jesse know about Jack Morrison, and Gabriel Reyes, and Ana Amari? He talks of Ana in the past tense, and surely he must know that Gabe has gone rogue, but what about Jack?

“Not much of the old crew,” Fareeha says. “Reinhardt is going to be upset that he missed out on seeing you.”

“Doubt that very strongly,” Jesse says. “He was never much for Blackwatch’s activities in the first place, and I didn’t get to shoot this gun except in their service.”

That’s right. Reinhardt was for honor and glory, through and through, while Jesse McCree and the others all operated from the shadows, not going through proper channels. Reinhardt very likely blames Blackwatch for his own career ending.

They come to a stop in an expanse of scrubland and hardpan. Small lizards go scurrying away into the shade of gnarled bushes, and Mei hopes this place serves her purposes without disturbing the local wildlife too much.

“Okay, I need some help getting this machine set up,” Mei says. “And we should probably have a lookout in case another bandit gang shows up.”

“I’ll stand watch,” Jesse says. He hops up from his seat and positions himself on the roll bars of the rover, looking around through the scope of Ashe’s rifle. “This is a good position. No one’s sneaking up and stealing our women tonight.”

He looks momentarily abashed to have said that, and shrugs it off. “Go on, do your thing.”

Mei’s flustered feelings around him dull somewhat. The sort of romantic ideation of his cowboy persona is cute, but after a while it gets boring, if not outright insulting, to listen to him talk like he’s from the early 20th century, riding a range and all but owning the women in his life.

Surely he isn’t like that, but she can’t shake it now.

Fareeha and Mei detach the weather cart and push it about twenty feet away, finding a position that they can anchor down and level the machine. Mei makes adjustments while Fareeha figures out how to detach Snowball from the blizzard maker Mei cobbled together.

“Okay, place it back in the cradle there,” Mei says, distracted.

“It must be exciting, getting to the actual mission part of the mission.”

“I am mostly just tired,” Mei admits. “And worried. This is the second mission I have been lead, and this is the second time it has gone from science to combat.”

“You shouldn’t be worried, Mei-Mei,” Fareeha says. “All missions and all plans never survive first contact with reality. Talon showing up was unexpected, yes, but you kept us on mission until it was no longer feasible to do so.”

“Or because Winston took leadership away,” Mei mumbles, entering some target data into the machine’s terminal. With Snowball attached and governing its algorithms, the machine is nearly ready to begin its collection.

“You took it back when it was prudent to do so. You always take such a grim view of your own performance, but you were amazing today. A-Mei-Zing, eh?”

Mei chuckles at the play on her name as she queues up the first sequence of wave generation and activates the machine’s dish array to receive data.

“We have to stand back while it collects each round of data,” she says, tugging on Fareeha’s sleeve and walking to the opposite side of where Jesse McCree stands on the rover, keeping watch. He waves at them briefly and winks at her, but Mei merely turns her lips up into what she hopes is a smile, and turns her attention to her friend.

Fareeha grins at the exchange. “You know, I can probably handle the next few rounds of collection if you’d like to go flirt with the cowboy.”

Mei doesn’t have to try very hard to fight the blush this time. “He is not my type.”

“Oh, and what is your type? Bespectacled, nervous, shy? A male version of you?”

Mei does fight a pink of embarrassment now. “There is nothing wrong with a smart, capable scientist,” she agrees, and Fareeha beams. 

The machine whirs to life, pulsing bassy rumbles that Mei wishes she could see live, but the telemetry it gathers now will be modeled in 3D later, as she has time to compile it all into a complex whole. The machine winds down.

“That’s round one,” she says, heading back in, Fareeha trailing her.

“And the strong, silent type doesn’t work for you?” Fareeha asks, ignoring the science.

Mei makes some adjustments, and the dish array rotates and repositions. She sets a timer and pulls Fareeha away, answering, “Strong, yes, silent, no.”

Fareeha grins as she lets herself be pulled. “You have heard the saying that opposites attract, yes?”

The machine whirs back to life, thumping its bassy notes out into the universe, collecting climatological data that the satellites in the sky just can’t nuance. If she had more time, she would collect dozens of sets over the course of a month, or months; but she is working with incomplete data against a short clock.

She nods at Fareeha while waiting for the machine to wind down again. “Are you suggesting that Jesse McCree is my opposite?”

Fareeha leans in and nudges Mei with a shoulder. “There is something in him you desire, it is plain as day. And he appears to admire you, as well. Is it so wrong to give in to a desire for intimacy? I have yet to see you attempting to date.”

Mei walks back to the machine, making more adjustments and checking Snowball. Its power reserve is lower than she’d like, on account of being used during the chase and blizzard, but it’ll have to do.

“We will get one more reading before packing it in,” she says, dragging Fareeha away once again.

“You did not answer me, Mei-Mei.”

Mei ignores her, until Fareeha leans in and whispers, “Are you embarrassed by this talk?”

Mei’s face reddens and she turns away, concentrating on the bassy sound of the machine sending its waves out, collecting data, returning. It finishes abruptly, and Mei guesses correctly that Snowball has run out of power. With the light draining away, the solar cells can only do so much, and they can’t risk draining the power on their rover, either.

Mei says, “I will transfer all the data to my personal device, and then we can load back up and get to safety.”

“Safety is overrated,” Fareeha jokes, but it catches Mei wrong.

“There is a minor thing I must note. We both broke protocol during the mission, not using our codenames.”

Fareeha nods. She knows when the conversation has pivoted back to official. “Apologies, leader. Perhaps it is harder than I expected to serve under a friend.”

Mei nods back. “We should try harder to respect that division. We work well together.”

Fareeha’s grin sends happy feelings flooding through Mei as they’re re-attaching the cart to the rover. “And I did save your life again today,” Fareeha says.

“At great risk to your own.” Fareeha frowns. “We both could have fallen to our deaths. I am happy to be alive, but it was a risk all the same.”

Jesse hops down from the top of the rover to help get the cart settled and ready for transport back to Winston and the rest. “The job is risk, Frostbite. No two ways about it. Your life, the lives of others. There’s never a dull moment when you place yourself in front of others doing harm.”

“I was not telling her she should have let me die, only that I appreciate the risk. I come out on these missions to perform science, to help all people, and twice now have been in harm’s way. I am hopeful the next mission will not see combat.”

“We can all agree to that,” Fareeha says, climbing back into the back seat. The return drive is truncated when Winston calls on the comms that they are moving in to rendezvous, and a minute later the engines sound and the lights appear over a hillock, bearing down on their location.

It takes no time at all to load the cart back into the cargo bay and pick the rover back up under the dropship. Jesse’s hover bike, and the hover cart, have already been loaded. Baptiste is onboard, weapons and gear stripped, but free to move about. Apparently Winston and Angela decided he could be useful after all.

Mei nods at this, welcoming Baptiste to the team.

“Thank you, Mei-Ling Zhou,” Baptiste says, offering a hand. She shakes it and he has a good, firm grip. Confident.

“Yeah, yeah, nice to meet you and all,” Jesse says, clapping Baptiste on the back and offering him a cigarette. When Baptiste shakes his head, Jesse grins. “They say it’ll kill me, but I’m pretty sure a stray bullet’ll find me first.”

“You cannot smoke in the dropship,” Fareeha says, grabbing the cigarette out of Jesse’s mouth and breaking it in two.

His eyes widen in mock anger. “In the old days, I’d be within my legal right to shoot you dead for ruining my tobacco.”

“In the old days, you’d have syphilis, too.”

Mei snorts and they leave Jesse and Baptiste to get acquainted. They’re heading back to Wheeler, Texas, to drop Jesse off, which shouldn’t take much time.

Winston pilots the dropship, and Angela is in the crew quarters. Mei pulls Fareeha to the side. “I’d like to talk to Winston privately, if that’s okay.”

“Sure. I’ll go check on Angela. Good work today, fearless leader.” Fareeha places a reassuring hand on Mei’s shoulder and squeezes. Mei places her hand on top and squeezes back, letting her friend go on her way. How does Fareeha always know just what to say and when to say it? 

Mei steels herself, and goes into the cockpit, where Winston is chatting with Squire over comms.

“Yes, he’s a medic. No, we are not replacing you. There’s always room for skilled combat medics, Squire. We can talk about this later. No, not as soon as we get back. Later, I said. Zinj out.”

He pulls the earpiece out and sighs as he adjusts their heading slightly with some complicated gestures on a screen. He huffs loudly. “You’d think I just fired her the way she reacted to that,” he mumbles.

“I understand her frustration,” Mei says, giving Winston a chance to acknowledge her presence.

He jumps in his seat a little, but just a little. “You scared me, Mei.” When he realizes they’re alone together, his shoulders slump. “I suppose you want to talk about today.”

Mei shakes her head. “Just one thing. I was out of line today when I berated you. You’re the Strike Commander, and if you override me in the field, I shouldn’t hesitate to change our strategy.”

“No, no,” Winston says, turning in the seat to face her, now that auto-pilot is on. “Truth be told, Mei, I should be apologizing to you.”

Mei’s eyes widen. 

“It’s true. We were on mission, we had a shaky truce to keep, and I put us all at unnecessary risk to chase after a personal vendetta against Akande. He got away from me once, and I didn’t want to let it happen again.”

Mei doesn’t know how to respond, so she stays quiet.

Winston sighs and then smiles. “If we are being honest, I made a mistake taking over the mission. You did the right thing by getting us back on track once a person had been abducted, and our team had been scattered. You did exactly right, Mei.”

“Th-thank you, Winston. I only did what I learned from watching you all in Overwatch.”

“That said, we need to finish up the mission properly. We have to drop off McCree, debrief everyone, thoroughly scan and search all of our equipment and all of Baptiste’s possessions for signs of tampering. We cannot lead Talon back to our headquarters before we are big enough to repel an attack. The last thing we need is to share the fate of the original Swiss HQ.”

Mei had already been in cryo stasis when it all went down, but she had taken time to review the pictures and footage, to understand what had happened and how they could have let it happen. The images haunt her to this day.

“Is it not dangerous to bring a former Talon operative straight to our HQ?” Mei asks.

“It would be, if that’s what we were doing. We are going to rendezvous with Lena and Reinhardt near Portland, Oregon, and send him with them, to complete McCree’s favor.”

“What is his favor?” Mei asks as Winston turns back to the controls and continues monitoring their progress.

“There’s an Omnic that he freed a few weeks back, who was making her way up to us when her signal cut out and McCree lost communication with her. The last GPS ping was near Portland, and McCree has other obligations on the east coast. So I’m sending the others in his stead.”

“Does Reinhardt know this?” He usually doesn’t like to go without Brigitte.

“They are already en route. How do you think I managed to get off the comms with HQ as fast as I did? No Reinhardt shouting in the background about pancakes or streusel or glory.”

Mei laughs, but knows it’s true. They’ll have time for debrief and gear search later. They’ll be dropping Jesse off in a few minutes, and she’d like to say goodbye.

They land and offload the hover bike, which Jesse begins packing his belongings back into, including Ashe’s rifle in a holster on the right. Wheeler, Texas is even darker and more desolate at night, but Jesse seems unperturbed as he goes about his business.

The others all say their goodbyes and head back up into the ship. Winston and Baptiste shake hands, Fareeha fist-bumps him, and Angela folds him into her embrace, which he lets her hold awkwardly for half a minute before letting her go. At last it’s just Mei and Jesse still on the ground, and she walks up to him, a bundle of nerves in her gut.

When he lifts his saddlebags to place spent ammunition inside, the thing she saw much earlier catches her eye again. 

“Is that--sorry, Jesse, is that a Pachi patch inside there?”

Jesse glances down and lifts out the patch. It’s the Fuchimari variant, wearing the traditional red Fortune robes for Chinese New Year. 

“This old thing?” he asks, examining it. “I don’t rightly remember where it came from.” He holds it out to her. “Looks like it’ll suit you. Something to remember old Jesse McCree by.” She stares at its cute little red robe and golden accents, fingers twitching to take it.

“It’s not for a child or something, is it?” she asks.

Jesse laughs. “Honestly can’t recall how it came to my possession. If it’ll make you happy to have it, I want you to be happy, Mei.”

Her heart melts a little and she reaches out for the patch. The previous cooling of her crush ramps back up, and her fingers linger on his as they hold the patch together.

The fingers fall away under hers, and the patch nearly drops from her grip before she pulls it to her chest. Feeling emboldened, she asks, “Is there something you’d like to say?”

He grins, and has the good grace to be the one to blush a little before saying, “Just, you know, if you’re ever down this way again, shoot me a ping. I’ll take you to dinner.”

Dinner with Jesse McCree. Somewhere around these badlands? She laughs. “We will see, Jesse McCree. Good luck to you, and if you ever find yourself in need of a team again, Overwatch would be glad to have you.”

“I’m not going back to my black ops days,” he says, shoulders arching in defense. 

“I did not mean that. There is no Blackwatch anymore. We are going to operate for the law, by the law, just as soon as we can prove we can be trusted to do so.”

The hostility disappears and his posture relaxes. “Wouldn’t that be something? Old Six-Gun shooting for the right side, for the right reasons. Until that day comes, Mei, I’ll see you on the old dusty trail.”

He raises a leg over the seat of the hover bike, looking every bit like a cowboy lifting into the saddle, before settling in and activating the anti-grav. The hover bike whirs to life, spins idly, and speeds off in a plume of dust, somewhere off to the east, a cowboy in the darkness.

Mei watches until even his lights are lost to the night, and turns back to the dropship. A head dips behind the dropship doorframe, and Mei stifles her embarrassment, shoving the Fuchimari patch into a pocket and walking up the ramp. They’ve got a short flight ahead of them, but Fareeha spying on her private conversation is going to make it feel interminable.

The debrief is blessedly brief, with Mei’s part on what she learned from the data incomplete as of now. The mission was successful, no one died, they saved a life, recruited a new combat medic, and established good relations with an old Overwatch member. 

The gear takes longer. By the time they arrive at the rendezvous point, they’ve thoroughly defragged and scanned every piece of equipment and clothing they had taken into the field, with it all coming away clean. The dropship and the rover especially took some time since Sombra was out there unobserved for an unknown length of time, and could have done anything to them.

When Mei’s blaster is cleared, and she performs her own check to be certain nothing is amiss, she wonders at how it got into the rover in the first place. She definitely left it in the Hearts’ Wrest. Could Sombra have secretly placed it there while Mei was getting ready to flee? If so, and it isn’t bugged or hacked, then why?

She is mystified by this while they land in an open field.

Out of the other dropship comes Lena Oxton, AKA Tracer, and Reinhardt Wilhelm, AKA Crusader. They sport their full gear and armor, and Lena blinks rapidly forward in a streak of yellow and white, her chronal accelerator flashing blue on her chest as it activates.

“So this is the bloke, eh?” she asks, motioning to Baptiste standing beside Winston.

“Jean-Baptiste Augustin, meet Tracer and Crusader.”

“Lena Oxton and Wilhelm Reinhardt,” Baptiste says, holding a hand out to Lena.

“Reinhardt Wilhelm, actually,” Reinhardt says. “I hear you were the enemy, and I look forward to smashing you to pieces if you betray us.”

“Ever tactful,” Lena says, shaking Baptiste’s hand. “I suppose a former Talon operative would know a lot about us. Winston, could I have a chat before we go?”

They walk off together while Reinhardt and Baptiste size each other up. Mei glances between them, wondering if it’ll come to blows, but the big armored man simply chuckles and offers his hand.

Baptiste shakes it as well, his hand engulfed in Reinhardt’s giant palm. “So I understand we are to go on a mission together?” Baptiste asks.

Reinhardt nods. “Search and rescue, the most boring mission that becomes the most interesting when there are bad guys involved.”

“And do we suspect foul play in this Echo’s disappearance?”

Mei says, “McCree lost her signal around here. Could be anything. Bandits, local law enforcement, malfunction, weather.”

“Talon,” Reinhardt says.

“If it is Talon,” Baptiste remarks, rubbing his goatee, “I have not heard of this.”

Winston and Lena come back, and Lena claps Baptiste on the back. “Come on then, rookie, let’s see what you’re made of.”

Baptiste goes off with Lena and Reinhardt, off to do McCree a favor and hopefully find this Echo. Winston seems to know something about her, but won’t say what.

The rest of the ride is short, and Mei spends it compiling her data while the rest take care of their gear and fly the dropship. She wants to drop it all into her programs at the HQ and let it run simulations overnight. 

They come in for their landing, following proper warehouse and dry dock procedures, and are met with cheers from the new recruits and the logistics crew. Winston ignores them, but makes sure Mei stands there to accept their admiration for another successful mission.

As does Fareeha, standing next to her, clapping and bumping her shoulder into Mei’s in reassurance.

“This is the worst,” Mei whispers.

“It is the best for some of us, Mei-Mei.” She leans in closer. “We should celebrate like we did for the first mission. Drinks on me?”

Mei is so tired, and still needs to run the data, that she isn’t sure she can manage a couple more hours of socializing and drinking. 

But over comms, Brigitte interrupts before Mei can say anything. “Girls night at my place. Fareeha, Mei, Angela, attendance is required. Booze is negotiable.”

Mei grumbles but accepts it. She pings Brigitte and says, “For a little while.”

Fareeha nods. “A few drinks won’t kill you.” 

Before that, Mei has data to analyze.

It takes Mei and Snowball very little time to determine that there is no commonality between the temperature spikes in Atacama and in the southern midwest. They are far enough apart that anything strong enough to affect them both would affect many more areas. The only place along the windstream that pings a higher than usual temperature is this tiny city on the Mexican part of the Baja California peninsula, known as Loreto. Nothing newsworthy or noteworthy about the city or the region, but maybe her search algorithms and pattern recognition software will spot something she doesn’t. She leaves Snowball cradled to use its processing power overnight, and leaves to get dressed for a comfortable girls night in.

 

Mei arrives to Brigitte’s apartment, which could be called spacious if it hadn’t been crammed full of parts, work benches, tools, and so many in-progress tinkerings that there is barely a place to sit. She wasn’t sure how to dress for a casual night in, so she opted for a simple blue blouse with a rounded neck and capris.

Angela and Fareeha have already opened a bottle of wine, and pour Mei a glass when she arrives. Angela, never one to dress down fully, wears a flowy white blouse and black slacks, but has let her hair down. Fareeha has her hair back in a ponytail, and wears a simple plain black tee shirt and jeans. Brigitte is wearing garish red overalls with an oil-stained undershirt. The stain looks fresh.

Mei finds several pictures of Brigitte’s father in small frames on the walls, along with the rest of her large family, and Mei feels a twinge of jealousy at their happy faces. 

“No no no, tonight is not about family and memories,” Brigitte says, pulling her away. “Tonight is about winding down, and building a jetpack for Johann.”

Mei is fairly certain Brigitte is joking about the jetpack for Brigitte’s cat, but then she sees hastily-drawn blueprints and a rough frame the size and shape of an adult cat.

“We are not putting your cat in a death trap we built while drinking,” Mei says.

“You won’t be saying that in another glass!” Brigitte declares, drinking the rest of her glass and calling for more.

After confirming that yes, in fact, she is joking, the gathering settles down into little two and three person chats, with the four of them sometimes howling with laughter in the living room about some wild story, usually Brigitte or Fareeha’s. Mei stops after her third glass of wine because the room is spinning, and Angela becomes very quiet after her fourth glass. 

Fareeha and Brigitte continue drinking, and start sketching out big plans for modifications to Fareeha’s armor and jetpack. Mei isn’t an engineer, but she is fairly certain that size of thruster would melt Fareeha’s bones. Let sober Brigitte figure that one out. And at one point, Mei is positive she hears Fareeha ask if Brigitte can install an amp, to quote, “shred the sky”. To which Brigitte howls with laughter and Fareeha’s face turns desperately pink.

Mei lets herself drop onto the couch next to Angela, who is watching with detached amusement. “These two are such natural goofballs.”

Angela nods. “It is sometimes nice to let your hair down and make wild plans that will never come to fruition.”

“And what would you do, as they are doing?” Mei asks.

Angela pulls her legs up onto the couch and leans her head on her knees, a maneuver that Mei only wishes she could do. “I don’t know, Mei. I don’t often have the luxury.”

“Tonight you do. It was embarrassing to stand in front of all those people and let them clap and cheer for us, for me, but we did a good job today, didn’t we?”

“It was a very good job. But we have many more good jobs to go before we can truly rest, and probably a few bad ones.”

Mei shakes her head at that. “I didn’t know you were a sad drunk. Is that the right phrase?”

Angela chuckles a little. “Not sad, perhaps realistic. I apologize, I probably drank too much wine.”

“We’ve gone through a few bottles between us already,” Mei agrees. Angela stares at her. “What? Am I slurring?” Angela laughs out loud, drawing the attention of the big orange cat, Johann, who jumps away to safety and hides behind the couch.

“You said that in Chinese.”

Did she? She laughs now. “It is my first language, I guess it is easier to default to Chinese when I have had a couple of glasses.”

“What’s so funny?” Fareeha asks, plopping down on the couch next to Mei, making the couch slightly crowded.

“Apparently I speak Chinese when I drink.”

“I heard it,” Angela says. “Another drink, anyone?”

She stands and fills glasses all around, but Mei notes that she only fills hers partway. 

“You do not speak much Chinese, just as I do not much speak much Arabic.”

“We have no one to speak it with!” Mei declares. 

Angela sits elsewhere, giving Mei and Fareeha the couch. Mei stretches out a little, but Fareeha leans in and crowds her, which Mei realizes is nice. Comfortable to have a friend leaning in and close.

Fareeha says, “You probably get to speak your native languages a little more often.”

Brigitte nods, turning a screw on some device. It looks like it might be one of her nanotech armor packs, but an old prototype. “I get to talk to my family a lot.”

Angela smiles. “And I have Reinhardt here to share in the glories of German, though would you believe he is no more elegant in speech in his home tongue?”

She sits up and puffs out her chest. “EHRE UND RUHM!” she shouts, doing a decent impersonation of Reinhardt. They all burst into laughter and the conversation is lost in bad accents and impersonations.

After some time, Angela excuses herself and calls a cab. Brigitte, declaring she will be back in a minute, passes out in her room and begins to loudly snore. 

Mei and Fareeha are left alone in Brigitte’s apartment, enjoying the sudden quiet of a party that wound down in less than three minutes. Mei sits up and pours herself another small glass of wine, emptying the bottle on the coffee table, where she puts it back amid another empty bottle and several gadgets Mei has no name for.

She holds her glass out to Fareeha, who leans back and smiles. “It is your turn to toast, I think?” she says, clinking her half-full glass against Mei’s.

Mei thinks for a moment. “To another successful mission, another empty bottle?”

Fareeha laughs and they drink. “How do you always have such wonderful words?”

Mei’s face reddens and she sets her glass down. “I just say what comes to mind.”

“May all climatologists have your wit,” Fareeha toasts again, and they drink, finishing off their glasses. “There’s probably another bottle in the kitchen.”

As she goes to stand, Mei puts her hand on Fareeha’s arm. “I think I am done drinking, Reeha.”

Fareeha lets herself fall back and leans on Mei again. “Aww, Mei-Mei, did I drink you under the table?” 

“Under the couch cushion, maybe.” She sets her glass down and settles in next to Fareeha once more. “Should we go? Brigitte probably wouldn’t like us being here while she’s asleep.”

Fareeha makes some dismissive noise with her lips. “Pft, she’s passed out. We’ll be gone before too long anyway. It’s just so comfy here.” She snuggles in a little more, and Mei has never been this intimate with a woman before. Her face feels hot suddenly.

“Maybe for just a little while,” Mei says. 

“And you can tell me about that steamy chat with Jesse.”

“It-it wasn’t steamy,” Mei stammers.

“Oh, please, you were practically swooning and I saw him blush. Just like the way you’re doing now, Mei-Mei!” she teases. “Did he make a pass at you?”

“Something like that.” She recounts the conversation, and Fareeha idly plays with the loose fabric of Mei’s sleeve. “In the end, I realized I wasn’t really attracted to him so much as I was romanticizing it. Just like he does with the whole cowboy thing.”

Fareeha sits up, laughing. “Did it get on your nerves after a while, too?”

Mei nods, chuckling. “It was cute at first, but that time period was also very brutal and misogynistic. I do not think he is like that, but it is hard to separate the two for me.”

“Me too,” Fareeha says. “Just be yourself, unless that self is a cowboy from 150 years ago.”

They laugh about Jesse McCree, good-naturedly, for a time, tipping their imaginary hats and spitting imaginary tobacco, until Fareeha changes the subject.

“Mei-Mei, are you enjoying the whole leadership thing?”

The pivot sobers Mei up a little. “Why do you ask? Am I doing a bad job? I knew it, I knew I was messing it up and no one would tell me.”

“Easy, you are doing a fine job. Winston would not let you run missions if he was afraid you weren’t ready, or would get people killed.”

“I do not know, then. I like doing a good job, and I like when we all come home without any serious injury. But mostly I like helping people, and if I have to lead a team to do that, then I guess I like being a leader.”

Fareeha’s face lowers, and her smile drops away. “That’s good. I’m happy for you, Mei-Mei.”

“Reeha? Are you not happy about something else?”

Fareeha shakes her head. “I’m too drunk to have this conversation, I think.”

“What conversation? We are talking about me being a leader.”

“It’s not that. You are doing great. I love that you’re doing so well.”

“Then what? Do you not want to serve under a rookie? Under a friend?”

“I don’t want to serve in the field, period.” She looks up, and Mei’s shocked face must be obvious. 

“Why did you join Overwatch if you didn’t want to serve?” Mei finally asks.

“It’s… that’s complicated. I used to be strike team leader and captain for the Egyptian armed forces. I used to be in charge of private security for Helix. It is hard to serve when you spent so long commanding.”

“Have you asked Winston for a command?”

“It’s too early for that, Mei-Mei. And I’m just drunk and venting. Do you know how very difficult it is to give up one dream for another?”

Mei shakes her head. “Reeha, is it really so bad serving under me?”

“It’s not about you! I could be taking orders from Angela, or Reinhardt, and I’d be just as conflicted. I spent my entire childhood working to join Overwatch, to join my heroes in the field, to protect the weak, to stop evil and corruption. And then by the time I was finally ready to do, Overwatch was gone. I couldn’t do that. So I served somewhere else.”

Mei puts an arm around Fareeha, unsure how to comfort her friend. “You will make a great leader in Overwatch, Reeha. If you can hold on and be a teammate instead of a leader for a little while longer, I’m sure Winston will offer you combat missions.”

“Maybe. It’s just hard.” Fareeha blots at the unshed tears in her eyes and laughs. “Can we talk about that insane move you pulled on the cliff? You cobbled together a literal blizzard machine and sprayed it at the bad guys in less than a minute!”

“And then had to be saved by you because I couldn’t remember to hold myself in place.”

“Doesn’t matter, I saved your ass! You stopped those two from an atrocity, and we recruited a new member as a result. That’s premium hero material right there. They’ll tell stories of the time that Frostbite shot the winter winds direct from her fingertips.”

“Ugh, that name.”

Fareeha leans in close and whispers, “We can always call you Snow Queen.”

“And I will call you Airdancer!” Mei pushes back on her friend, and she falls backwards on the couch, laughing and groaning at her own unfortunate nickname.

Mei helps pull her friend into a seated position once more, and they lean into each other, relaxing and enjoying each other. “Reeha?” Mei asks.

“Yes, Mei-Mei?”

“Can you believe how loud Brigitte snores?”

Fareeha sighs and giggles. “It sounds just like her father when he’d fall asleep at his workbench.” They devolve into laughter and end the night passed out together on Brigitte’s couch.

 

Epilogue:

 

Sombra watches the pair fall asleep on the couch from her hijacked video feed in one of Brigitte’s various projects around the room. They look cute together, she thinks. She flicks her view between a few other homes and the warehouse they’re laughably calling their HQ, but it’s late and all is quiet in Overwatch.

She can’t believe Mei didn’t pick up on the not-so-subtle hint that Sombra was watching them all, that she sees and hears all, knows all. Mei-Mei is only Fareeha’s word, and yet Mei hasn’t remembered Sombra’s use of it.

She needs one of them to realize it. They need to know she’s on their side. Or that they’re on her side. They share goals.

Talon may be the only ones who can stop the coming crisis, but Overwatch and its bright-eyed, hopeful idiots are certainly going to play their part.

They have to, if they want to prevent countless death.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big, fluffy chapter to end the mission! Mei's third mission begins in a couple weeks!


End file.
